The Catechism Explained


PART I - FAITH.
THE APOSTLES' CREED. 
FIRST ARTICLE OF THE CREED: "I BELIEVE IN GOD, 
THE FATHER ALMIGHTY." 
5. HISTORY OF CREATION. 
"We are instructed by the writer of the book of Genesis in 
the story of creation. 
The account given of the creation in the book of Genesis is not 
a fable, but is founded on truth. The sacred writer was enlightened 
by the Holy Ghost, and his words are a part of the Word of God. 
Perhaps God gave him a vision of the course of creation. The story 
is in exact agreement with the conclusions of natural philosophy. 
All investigations into the crust of the earth show that organic life 
was developed in the order set forth in Genesis. 
1. In the beginning God created the spiritual and material 
universe. 
" In the beginning " i.e., in the beginning of time, when there 
was nothing else existing except God. Time began with the world, 
so that before the creation there was no time. Holy Scripture does 
not tell us when the world was created. The world may have existed 
for millions of years before the creation of man. The fact that it 
takes millions of years for the light of some of the heavenly bodies 
to reach the earth, seems to show this to have been the case. 
" Created," i.e., made out of nothing. How God produced the mate- 
rials out of which the world was made we know not. Instead of the 
spiritual and the material world, St. Paul says, " things visible and 
invisible " (Col. i. 16). The words of Genesis are, " In the beginning 
God created the heaven and the earth." The heaven does not mean 
the star-bespangled sky, the creation of which is narrated subse- 
quently (Gen. i. 6-8; 14-19). It means the abode of the angels and 
the saints. The material world is called the earth, because the earth 
is for men the most important part of the material world. The first 
words of the Bible, " God created heaven," are intended to remind 
man of his last end and future destiny. 
The spiritual world consists of the angels, and the heaven 
where they dwell. 
The angels are called the "Morning-stars" (Job xxxviii. 7), be 
cause they were created before this material world, and in the morn- 
ing of the universe. Hell was not created at the beginning of the 
universe (Matt. xxv. 34), but at a later period, after the fall of 
the rebel angels (Matt. xxv. 41). 
The material world includes all things which are found in 
the visible universe. 
Men are a union of spirit and body, and were created later. 
2. The material world was at first without form, without in- 
habitants, and without light. 
God first created the material elements out of which the world 
was formed. Natural philosophy tells us that the world existed first 
of all in the form of a vast mass of vapor, and that this vast mass 
gradually was condensed, under the influence of an intense heat, into 
the material universe. This is perfectly in accordance with the 
account of the creation given in Genesis. 
3. God gave to the material universe its present form in the 
course of six days. 
The days are probably long periods of time, consisting of many 
thousands of years; for the seventh day, the day of rest, lasts until 
the end of the world. Moreover four of the days were already 
elapsed before the sun was formed, and therefore they cannot have 
been days as we now understand the word. The word day is chosen 
because the week of creation was to be a sort of pattern of our present week. 
On the first day God made the light. 
We read in Genesis that God said, " Let there be light," and there 
was light. The expression, " Let there be," denotes that something 
came into existence which did not exist before. This was the 
luminous matter which is now gathered in the sun; it is not dependent 
on the sun, but the sun on it. The gaseous matter was at first un-
formed, i.e., it had no forces. God imparted to it the law of gravita-
tion, by means of which the various particles of matter were set in 
motion and drawn together, and thus were condensed gradually into 
a solid mass. By this process warmth, and at last fire, were developed.
 On the first day fire, the main source of light, was produced by the 
movement given to the gaseous particles, and the existing vapor was 
condensed into masses endowed with fire and light. 
On the second day God made the firmament. 
The words of Genesis are, " God said, Let there be a firmament 
made amidst the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 
And God called the firmament heaven" (Gen. i. 6, 8). On this day 
there was a separation, arrangement, and establishment of the created 
masses, which were divided into parts according to their constitution 
and magnitude, parted from one another, and arranged in the places 
that God had destined for them. This planting of the various worlds 
in their places in space constituted the "firmament," which God 
called " heaven," in which the sun and moon and stars pursue the 
course that was allotted to each. This firmament is the material 
heaven, as opposed to the spiritual heaven which is identical with the 
celestial paradise. The earth on which we live was one of the con- 
densed masses which took its place among the other heavenly bodies. 
God at the same time divided off the planets that move around 
the sun, which forms the centre of their system from the fixed stars 
(v. 7). 
On the third day God made the dry land and the plants. 
Here the sacred writer concerns himself more especially with our 
earth. The earth, which was originally a fiery ball of gas, gradually 
lost its heat, as it cooled down in the midst of space. The great 
masses of mist divided themselves off into the sea and land. The 
solid elements were drawn together, and formed the crust of the 
earth, through which the water forced itself from within. Thus were 
made the various oceans or seas, and by this upheaval the surface of 
the earth as it exists at present was gradually formed, with its con- 
tinents, and islands, its mountains and valleys. Under the influence 
of the warmth of the earth the moist surface was now ready for the 
development of organic life. This did not arise out of nothing, like 
the original primary matter; it was already implanted in the earth 
by almighty God, and was evolved therefrom as soon as circumstances 
favorable to its development presented themselves. No organic life 
can arise from mere inorganic matter. No possible combination of 
mere inorganic materials can ever produce any kind of organic life. 
The original germs out of which life arose were already existing in 
the vapor-cloud out of which the earth was formed, but were not able 
to develop themselves under the conditions of extreme heat and cold. 
They remained as undeveloped germs until the more moderate tem- 
perature enabled them to produce plants and trees under the influence 
of warmth and moisture. 
On the fourth day God made the sun, moon, and stars. 
On the fourth day of creation, the earth, which had been involved 
in darkness by the thick mist that surrounded it as long as it had not 
fully cooled down, began to have a clearer atmosphere, and only a 
few clouds floated over its surface, instead of the dense vapor that 
had encircled it. The shining bodies in the heaven became visible; 
the sun began to exercise an influence upon the earth, and produced 
the alternations of day and night, and the various seasons of the year. 
The sun had previously a feeble power of radiation, but during this 
fourth period it assumed its present form. We do not know whether 
there exist living beings on any of the stars ; if there are such, they 
must be of a very different nature from our own. We know that in 
the moon there is no atmosphere, no fire, no water, no sound, no rain, 
no wind, no vegetation, and a long night of three hundred and fifty 
hours. 
On the fifth day God made the fishes and the birds. 
On the sixth day God made the animals and, last of all, man. 
The animals were next made in order to proclaim the power of 
their Creator by their number, variety, greatness, strength, and 
cleverness, and also to serve man, to nourish him, clothe him, and 
labor for his benefit. Man was produced the last of all the animals, 
and surpasses them all in dignity, and in the possession of reason and 
free will. Man is the crown of God's creation. God prepared the 
world for his reception, that he might enter and take possession of it 
as a king takes possession of his kingdom. The world would not have 
been complete without man; all else was made for his sake. In all 
the rest of the work of creation God simply said " Let it be," but 
before He created man He is represented as taking counsel with 
Himself. This is to show the importance and the dignity of man. 
4. On the seventh day God rested from all His work that He 
had done. 
God's rest consists in this, that on the seventh day He brought 
nothing more into existence. It was the working out, without any 
further creative action on the part of God, of the order that He had 
established. The fact that God rested does not mean that He ceased 
from working (John v. 17). God must continue to work in the world, 
else it would cease to exist. As God rested after His work, so we 
shall one day rest in Him when our work is done. 
From the story of creation we learn that God made the world 
after a fixed plan. 
God in creation proceeded from the lower to the higher. He first 
made all things that were necessary for what was afterwards to come 
into life, e.g., He made first the plants and then the animals that 
needed them for food. In the first three days He separated the 
various parts of the world from each other; in the three following 
days He developed and adorned creation. The three first days corre- 
spond to the three last ; for on the first He made light, on the fourth 
luminous bodies ; on the second He separated water and air from each 
other, on the fifth He filled the water with fishes and the air with 
birds ; on the third He made the dry land and on the sixth He filled it 
with animals. 
From the account of creation we also learn that the world 
is not eternal. 
The heathen thought that the world sprung from the accidental 
concurrence of a number of eternal atoms. But the present wonder 
ful order could not possibly have arisen by chance, and the atoms are 
all dependent on one another, and therefore could not be eternal. 
The atoms, too, could never have put themselves in motion. Others 
thought that the materials of the world were eternal, and that God 
simply arranged them. Others imagined that the world was de- 
veloped out of the divine essence (the Pantheists). But this would 
make the world indivisible and unchangeable, and we know that 
this is not so. God indeed is everywhere, but the world is not God ; 
it is something different from Him, and separated from His being. 
From What, and for what End has God Created the World? 
1. God made the world out of nothing, simply because it 
pleased Him to make it. 
Man can only make anything out of pre-existing materials. God 
made the materials. Men have to employ implements, they have to 
labor, and require a certain time to produce their work. God spoke, 
and the world was made. He did not need even to speak ; all that was 
needed was that He should will what He desired done. 
All that God created was very good. 
God Himself commended His own works (Gen. i. 31). The world 
was very good, because it in no way diverged from the divine idea 
but was in perfect accordance with it. God praised His own works, 
because no one else could praise them sufficiently. We also should 
praise God in His works, as the three young men did in the fiery 
furnace at Babylon. Evil is evil, because creatures make a bad use 
of their free will. Nothing that exists can be bad in itself, but every 
thing must at least be in some way good. 
2. God was moved to make the world by His great goodness. 
His object was to make His reasonable creatures happy. 
As a good father shows pictures to his children, to please them and 
make them love him, so God has manifested His works to His 
reasonable creatures, to make them happy and earn their love. God 
made all earthly things for our good; some for the support of men 
(plants and animals), some for their instruction, some for their en- 
joyment, some for their trial, as sickness, suffering, etc. " All 
things that I see upon the earth," says St. Augustine, " proclaim that 
Thou hast made them from love of me, and call upon me to love 
Thee." God did not need the world. He made it for our sakes. 
3. The end of creation is necessarily to proclaim to men the 
glory of God. 
In every work we have to distinguish between the end of the 
maker of the work, i.e., that which moved the artificer to make the 
work, and the end of the work itself, i.e., that for which the work 
is destined. In a clock, e.g., the end of the maker of the clock is his 
own profit ; the end of the clock is to indicate the time. In the world 
the motive of the Artificer is God s great goodness; the end of the 
work is God's glory and the happiness of His reasonable creatures. 
The motive of the countless number and variety of living and life 
less beings and the innumerable number of the stars, is that angels 
and men may know and admire the majesty of God. The end and 
object of the existence of angels and men are that they may unceas- 
ingly behold and praise God (Is. vi. 3). St. Augustine says, "Thou 
hast made us for Thyself, O God, and how unquiet is our heart so 
long as it finds not its rest in Thee !" Even the devils are compelled to 
contribute, in spite of themselves, to the glory of God; for by their 
punishment they show how holy and just God is, and God employs 
them also for the perfection of His elect through resistance to their 
temptations. Even the lost in hell manifest the justice and holiness 
of God and His hatred of sin. " God has made all things for Him- 
self ; the wicked also for the evil day" (Prov. xvi. 4). Yet God did 
not make the world with a view to any increase in His glory ; for God 
is infinitely happy in Himself, and has no need of anything or any 
one outside of Himself. 
Since we are made for the glory of God, we should in all our 
works have the intention of honoring God. 
St. Paul instructs us that, " whether we eat or drink, or whatever 
we do, we should do all to the glory of God " (1 Cor. x. 31). Nothing 
is easier than to give glory to God, since we can direct our most mi- 
nute actions to this end. When we wake in the morning, and often- 
times during the day we should renew this intention.
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PART I - FAITH.
THE APOSTLES' CREED.

INTRODUCTION

PART I - FAITH.

PART I - FAITH.THE APOSTLES' CREED.

THE CATECHISM EXPLAINED

INTRODUCTION

PART I - FAITH.

PART I - FAITH.
THE APOSTLES' CREED.
