The Sixth Day of Christmas

Six geese laying eggs. As we celebrate the birth of Our Lord, we are minded very much of the first Creation. He who created the world enters into Time from without to be born of the Virgin.

This last sentence is bound to upset many who cannot reconcile the Biblical account of the Creation with the evidence of Science pointing toward the Big Bang, or who do not see parthenogenesis as applicable to human beings. The real fact is that no-one actually KNOWS what happened at the moment of Creation. The Big Bang is still a theory, and very, very convincing it is too as it does fit observable facts. One can be justified in one's confidence in the theory.

The Biblical account could still be true, though then one has to reconcile the two Creation stories in the first and second chapters of Genesis. Perhaps that can be done. Whether it can be done or not is not really the point. Whether there were six days of Creation or a Big Bang is not the point either, but rather reasons for people to talk past each other. Genesis says that God created the Universe, but it doesn't say how except in figurative and poetic allusions to Man's affinity with the dust.

Six days of Creation - Light, Waters, Fecund Earth, Heavenly Bodies, Animals, Man - all relate to our common human experience of living. Our days begin when light falls on our eyes, blinding us temporarily as we fumble about from our slumber. We feel the water on our face as we freshen up, ready for the new day. We eat our bowls of cereal, the product of the Earth's fertility. We leave the house and see the sun in the sky. We stroke next-door's cat as she mews loudly at us passing by, and then we greet our fellow co-workers as we begin our working day. This is the point of our creation story: all this has been made possible by the coming together of elements from all over the universe. every atom in our bodies has passed through the heart of a star. According to our understanding, every proton in us has been forged in the first few seconds of the life of the Universe and is now present within us for a little while before it carries on its journey in spacetime.

Our everyday lives have their beginning in God in so many beginnings of which we are necessarily completely ignorant. Yet, God is behind our existence from the micro- to the macroscopic to the astronomical, having decreed the physical law as well as the Moral Law which is expounded and expanded by the Torah and Gospels of the great Incomprehensible Trinity who deigns to make a twofold covenant with us, unified and ratified in the blood of Christ on the Cross. Our Creation gives us the first glimpse of the gift of Life given by our True Love.