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 On Harmony of Thunder Orthodox podcast: There must have been some good reason to create the sun on the fourth day of creation, three days after the creation of light and the creation of days. How can there be light without the sun? Or a day without the light of the sun? Find out how St. Basil the Great tackles this question on this week's Harmony of Thunder.
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Harmony of Thunder, program twelve, St Basil the Great Hexaemeron, Homily 6
The psalm we hear the most often after Psalm 50, the penitential psalm, is the one that we say at the opening of Vespers, the one that starts, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, O Lord my God thou art very great.” If you listen carefully to this psalm, you'll hear that most of it expresses the majesty of God's creation: “Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever. Thou coverest it with the deep as with a garment, the waters stood above the mountains,” and so on. The Psalmist calls the people of God from the world into the house of worship. But we don't simply forget that the world exists when we worship God, far from it. The psalmist recalls the entirety of Creation and the fullness of the earth (remember the part, “The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies”? The next time you're driving along the highway and you see a woodchuck, remind him that God thought enough of him to mention him, or technically, his cousin, in the Psalms) as our introduction to the liturgical day. But how? How do we see the eternal in the temporal, the holy in the common, the wonder of God's gift of creation in the waddling groundhog or the wild goat (something I've never even heard of before)? St. Basil the Great gives us some help in his sixth sermon from the Hexaemeron, entitled “the Creation of Luminous Bodies.”
Hi, welcome to Harmony of Thunder, where we explore and enjoy the rich tradition of Orthodox preaching. I’m your host, Fr. David Smith. Each week, Harmony of Thunder chooses a sermon from scripture or from the works of a saint and we spend our time together looking at the style, the illustrations, and the spiritual message of the preacher.
Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayers of Your Most Pure Mother and of all the saints, bless your Holy Orthodox Church with great preachers and people who want to hear them. Amen.
And to what luminous bodies does St Basil refer? First of all, he's talking about the sun and the moon. The preacher brings up a very interesting point – light and darkness, and also day and night, had already been created on the first day. How is it that the sun is only here, on the fourth day of creation, entering the picture? It seems as if the sun would dictate light and darkness, day and night, wouldn't it? Listen to the words of St Basil as he reveals to us the plan of God: “However, the sun and the moon did not yet exist, in order that those who live in ignorance of God may not consider the sun as the origin and that father of light, or as the maker of all that grows out of the earth. That is why there was a fourth day, and then God said, 'Let there be light in the firmament of the heaven'.”
See how this works? It is the nature of the sun to give us light, and the light of the sun delineates the time periods we call day and night. But the light is God's, not the sun's. Those who worshiped, and perhaps today worship, the sun can see that it is a creation of God, and even the light that it gives is not original to it, but was created and is daily distributed, by God.
This means, dear listener, that God can conceive of the sun without its light. St Basil quotes from the Psalm in his sermon : “The voice of the lord divideth the flames of fire” as a way of showing us God's immense power, that all aspect of creation, even flames as distinct from fire, are within His grasp.
And in this sixth sermon St Basil spends some time on a topic that he returns to occasionally in the Hexaemeron, astrology. The preacher admits that we do indeed make predictions based on the stars : “Those who devote themselves to the observation of these bodies find signs in the different phases of the moon, as if the air, by which the earth is enveloped, were obliged to vary to correspond with its change of form. Toward the third day of the new moon, if it is sharp and clear, it is a sign of fixed fine weather. If its horns appear thick and reddish, it threatens us either with heavy rain or with a gale from the south. Who does not know how useful are these signs in life?”
And yet, it's clear that we cannot go to the stars as guides for what happens in our personal lives. The preacher makes an interesting point : how can we tell exactly the time of someone's birth? At the time of St. Basil, a midwife could not look up at a clock on the wall and record the hour, minute, and second, which is really necessary for astrological prediction to be useful. And in addition, St. Basil asks how many times during the year is it possible that a king would be born? And when have all the kings of the world been born? Were not other children born at the same time who lived ordinary, even difficult and poverty stricken lives? It doesn't make sense that the stars influence us unless we can say that it works consistently for everyone. To quote St. Basil : “Thus, if it is impossible to find exactly the hour of birth, and if the least change can upset all, then both those who give themselves up to this imaginary science and those who listen to them open-mouthed, as if they could learn from them the future, are supremely ridiculous.”
Indeed, a Christian may not set any trust in the predictions of the astrologers, who look to the stars as justification for what happens to them and for what they do. “As for us Christians, we shall see our great hopes vanish, since from the moment that man does not act with freedom, there is neither reward for justice, nor punishment for sin.”
Enough about astrology.
St. Basil also speaks about the ways in which our observations of the moon can teach us about spiritual things. The changeability of the moon teaches us, for instance, about the changeability of mankind: “Now it is not without a secret reason of the divine Maker of the universe that the moon appears from time to time under such different forms. It presents a striking example of our nature Nothing is stable in man, here from nothingness he raises himself to perfection, there after having hasted to put forth his strength to attain his full greatness he suddenly is subject to gradual deterioration, and is destroyed by diminution. Thus, the sight of the moon, making us think of the rapid vicissitudes of human things, ought to teach us not to pride ourselves on the good things of this life, and not to glory in our power, not to be carried away by uncertain riches, to despise our flesh which is subject to change and to take care of the soul, for its good is unmoved.”
I used a long quotation there because, well, aren't the words of St. Basil filled with both poetic beauty and theological power? Like all good preaching done by great preachers.
And so it is that St. Basil uses the creation of the sun and moon, and the stars also, as a way that we can learn about the even greater splendor of God: “But enough on the greatness of the sun and moon. May He Who has given us intelligence to recognize in the smallest object of creation the great wisdom of the Contriver make us find in great bodies a still higher idea of their Creator. However, compared with their Author, the sun and moon are but a fly and an ant.” I love that image. That's a seriously down to earth image, and it should be our quote of the day: “Compared with their Author, the sun and moon are but a fly and an ant.”
But really, how does this help us worship God? As the opening psalm during Vespers bids us, how do we really bring the marvels of the Creation into the house of God when we gather to worship? We must know our world, study it, understand it and love it. Only in this way, not in denying the rigors of science, but by embracing them, do we fully comprehend the secrets that God has given us to discover. As St Basil says: “If we are penetrated by these truths, we shall know ourselves, we shall know God, we shall adore our Creator, we shall serve our Master, we shall glorify our Father, we shall love our Sustainer, we shall bless our Benefactor, we shall not cease to honor the prince of present and future life.”
Next week, let's look at the seventh sermon of St. Basil's Hexaemeron, a short one, as he says, because of the lateness of the hour and his own bodily infirmity. It's titled “The Creation of Moving Creatures” and I hope you'll join us.
Oh Lord God, Creator of Heaven and earth and all the lights above it, help us to hear and heed the words of the great preachers of Orthodoxy, that we may glorify you with our faith and lives, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
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