Creation directed toward opening up a space for the response to God

Easter Vigil: HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Creation is therefore directed towards the coming together of God and his creatures; it exists so as to open up a space for the response to God’s great glory, an encounter between love and freedom...

What is the creation account saying here?  Light makes life possible.  It makes encounter possible.  It makes communication possible.  It makes knowledge, access to reality and to truth, possible.  And insofar as it makes knowledge possible, it makes freedom and progress possible.  Evil hides.  Light, then, is also an expression of the good that both is and creates brightness.  It is daylight, which makes it possible for us to act.  To say that God created light means that God created the world as a space for knowledge and truth, as a space for encounter and freedom, as a space for good and for love.  Matter is fundamentally good, being itself is good.  And evil does not come from God-made being, rather, it comes into existence only through denial.  It is a “no”.

The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil.  The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general.  If God and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness, then all other “lights”, that put such incredible technical feats within our reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at risk.  Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars of the sky are no longer visible.  Is this not an image of the problems caused by our version of enlightenment?  With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify.  Faith, then, which reveals God’s light to us, is the true enlightenment, enabling God’s light to break into our world, opening our eyes to the true light.