1st Monday of Lent (St. Cyril of Jerusalem)

Isaias 1:1-20

A Vision which Isaias, son of Amos, saw, which he saw against Judea and Jerusalem, in the reign of Ozias and Jotham and Achaz and Ezekias, who reigned over Judea. Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, because the Lord has spoken. I begot children and exalted them, but they rejected me. An ox knows its owner, and an ass its lord’s manger; but Israel does not know me, and my people has not understood. Woe, sinful nation, people full of sins, evil seed, lawless children! You have deserted the Lord and angered the Holy One of Israel. Why would you still be smitten as you add iniquity to iniquity? The whole head is in pain and the whole heart in grief; from feet to head there is no wholeness, nothing but wound, bruise, festering sore; it is not possible to apply plaster, or oil, or bandages. Your land is desert, your cities destroyed by fire; as for your country foreigners devour it before your eyes, and it has become a desert, ravaged by foreign peoples. The daughter of Sion will be abandoned, like a tent in a vineyard and like a store house in cucumber patch, like a city besieged. And had the Lord of hosts not left us seed, we had become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrha. Hear the word of the Lord, rulers of Sodom. Attend to the law of God, people of Gomorrha. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I am full of holocausts of rams, and the fat of rams and the blood of bulls and goats I do not want. You are not to come to appear to me; who sought these things from your hands? You shall no more come to trample my courts; if you bring flour it is vain; incense is an abomination to me. Your new moons and Sabbaths and high days I do not endure; fast and holiday and your feasts my soul hates; you have become a excess for me, I shall no longer forgive your sins. When you stretch out your hands to me, I shall turn away me eyes from you; and if you multiply supplication, I shall not listen to you; for your hands are full of blood. Wash and become clean; put away the evils from your souls; in my sight cease from your evils, learn to do good, seek out judgement, deliver the wronged, judge for the orphan and do justice to the widow. And come, let us reason together, says the Lord; and if your sins are as scarlet, I will make them white as snow, while if they are crimson, I will make them white as wool. And if you are willing and will listen to me, you eat the good things of the land; but if you are not willing, and will not listen to me, a sword devours you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken this. 

Genesis 1:1-13

In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. Now the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the deep and the Spirit of God was being borne upon the water. And God said: Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God made a separation between the light and the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night; and there was evening and there was morning, one day. And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water and let there be a separation between the water and the water; and it was so. And God made the firmament; and God made a separation between the water, which was below the firmament, and between the water which was above the firmament. And God called the firmament Heaven; and God saw that it was good, and there was evening and there was morning, a second day. And God said: Let the water below heaven be gathered together into one gathering, and let dry land appear; and it was so. And the water below heaven was gathered together into their gatherings, and the dry land appeared. And God called the dry land Earth, and the accumulations of the waters he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said: Let the earth sprout herb of grass, sowing seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and fruiting tree making fruit, whose seed is in it according to its kind upon the earth; and it was so. And the earth brought forth herb of grass, sowing seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and fruiting tree making fruit, whose seed was in it according to its kind upon the earth, and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and morning, a third day. 

Proverbs 1:1-20

Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, who reigned in Israel, for knowing wisdom and instruction, understanding words of prudence, receiving difficulties of words, understanding true justice and directing judgement; that he might give cunning to the innocent, to a young man perception and understanding. For a wise man hearing these will be wiser, while the man of understanding will gain guidance; and will understand both parable and dark word, sayings of the wise and riddles. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; while there is good understanding for all those who do it; true religion towards God is the beginning of perception; while the godless will reject wisdom and instruction. Hear, my son, your father’s instruction and do not reject your mother’s rules. For you will receive a crown of graces for your head and a golden collar about your neck. My son, do not let godless men lead you astray, nor be willing, if they invite you, saying: Come with us, partake of blood, let us hide unjustly a just man in the earth; let us drink him down living, like Hell, and remove his memory from the earth; and let us lay hold on his valuable property; let us fill our houses with spoils; cast in your lot with us, and let us all obtain a common purse, and let their be one wallet for us; do not go in the way with them; turn aside your foot from their paths; for their feet run to wickedness and are swift to shed blood. For nest are not unjustly spread for birds. For they share in murder, store up evils for themselves; the overthrow of lawless men is evil. These are the ways of all that accomplish lawless deeds, for by godlessness they do away with their own soul. Wisdom is praised in the streets, in the squares brings boldness.

Comments on the reading from Genesis

In the beginning, are also opening words to the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made" (1:1-3). Understood through the eyes of the Gospel, we gain a greater insight into the meaning of the words of Genesis. From the opening words of the Torah, we see a revelation of the three Persons of the Trinity. God made, refers to God the Father as creator of all things, God said, refers to His Word, God the Son, through whom all things are made, and we see the Spirit of God who gives life to all of creation hovering above the waters.

What we must understand about the creation account in Genesis is that it is first and foremost a theological account, not a scientific or historical one. This is not to suggest one cannot read Genesis literally, but it is the theological meaning of the text that is of importance and which we should examine.

God made the heaven and the earth. The Fathers understand this heaven to be the invisible world, and that it shows us that the creation of the various ranks of angels, which far outnumber humanity, took place before the creation of the visible universe. Darkness was upon the deep...and God said: Let there be light, and there was light. This again takes us to the opening of John's Gospel, where he says "In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (1:4-5). We therefore see that, not only does God create the physical light by His Word, but that the Word, Jesus Christ, is Himself the true Light and Life of the world. This is why we hear of light before the creation of the sun and the stars, and why in Revelation we read that the heavenly Jerusalem will have "no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb" (21:23). 

And there was evening and there was morning. This is why the Church, like the Jews, considers evening to be the beginning of the new day, and why Vespers is the first service in the daily liturgical cycle. One day. While the other days of creation are numbered second, third, fourth, fifth, the first day is not called 'first' but one. Christ rose on the first day of the week, Sunday. By calling it one rather than the first, Moses points us to the eternal nature of the resurrection. 

Let the earth sprout herb of grass. By placing the creation of plant life before the creation of the sun, on which plants depend, Moses is again pointing us to the fact that it is God who is the ultimate source of life and sustenance.

And God saw that it was good. Everything in creation is inherently good because the Good God is its author. It is only through the exercise of free will (which itself is a good thing, for without it love could not exist) that evil could enter into the world. Evil has no existence in and of itself, but is a distortion and absence of goodness. Even Satan was created good, but he and those angels who followed him used their free will to turn away from God, cutting themselves off from his goodness and becoming evil.