Despite enduring both Nazi and Soviet regimes, Karol Wojtyła never doubted the goodness of Creation. In fact, his constant meditation on the Creation accounts in Genesis did a lot to form his way of looking at the world. Is the world something worth saving? Or is the world so depraved that we should write it off and start over somewhere else? What would happen if the question were presented to the Blessed Trinity: Is this world worth saving? The answer is given in the Son’s Mission. He does not recoil from the mission, but rather he assumes human nature and enters the world. The Son responds with a resounding Adsum. “I am here! Send me.”
Goodness of Creation
Pope St. John Paul II underlines the goodness of creation in the way he looks at Jesus as the Savior of the world.
The good has its source in Wisdom and Love. In Jesus Christ the visible world which God created for man… recovers again its original link with the divine source of Wisdom and Love (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 8).
Because God contemplates the world as his creation and as something fundamentally good, he sees it as something to save and not a loss. Creation is good. Original sin wounded creation’s relationship with God. Sin does not make creation evil, but it disorders man’s relationship with God, with other people, and with the created world.
Telos of Creation
St. Paul’s writing allows us to see creation as having a telos: it is ordered toward the fulfillment that comes with redemption. The drama of human existence plays itself out in this created, material world. Creation itself waits for the revelation of the sons and daughters of God.
We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains until even now (Rom. 8:22).
Recognizing our own adoption as sons and daughters of God is what gives us great hope. John Paul II opens the letter of the Apostle to the Romans as a source of great encouragement as he proclaims the wonderful truth of the Gospel to the community in Rome.
Subjection to Futility
The story of the material world is not only a glorious story however. Already, Paul noted the subjection to futility of the created world. Wojtyła applies this to certain phenomena
such as the threat of pollution of the natural environment in areas of rapid industrialization, or the armed conflicts continually breaking out over and over again, or the prospectives of self-destruction through the use of atomic, hydrogen, neutron and similar weapons, or the lack of respect for the life of the unborn (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 8).
Being one of the Council Fathers and echoing the optimism that characterizes Gaudium et Spes, he nevertheless recognizes the real challenges of the modern world, even in the midst of marvels such as space flight and previously unattained conquests of science and technology.
All of this reminds us that we are not meant definitively for this world and with this world we await
with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God (Rm. 8:19).
Even visible creation is affected by the coming of Christ. Paul is keenly aware of the wound that Creation suffered through Original Sin. Similarly, Pope John Paul II reflected often on this. We can see this in his catechesis cycle referred to as Theology of the Body. Many people reduce this teaching to an exposition on human sexuality. This is certainly a component, but more profoundly, I think we can look at it as a Theology of Creation. The body itself gives witness to the fact that we are creatures.
He taught us what it means to be created beings. We are not self-sufficient. We did not call ourselves into existence. We need God to survive and to thrive. Even the created world needs the coming of Christ. We are gifted, dependent, relational, and destined for resurrection.
Heart of Man
In this encyclical focused on the Redemption of Man, the Holy Father focuses on the heart of man. We are made for God. Jesus penetrates the heart of man and gives him true purpose and meaning. At the Second Vatican Council, the Council Fathers focused on this reality in Gaudium et Spes. When we look at the inner reality of man, we express this sacred area as “heart.”
Christ, the Redeemer of the world, is the one who penetrated in a unique, unrepeatable way into the mystery of man and entered his “heart” (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 8).
The Pope often looks at the mystery of man, especially his interiority. This is so much of what makes man unique. He acts, but he also knows that he acts and can reflect on his past, present, and future actions. We can experience knowing others, and yet there is always a veil of unknowing. People reveal themselves through speech. For this reason, the drama and literary background of Karol Wojtyła always affected his way of seeing the world. Language is not merely a means of communication. It is part of what it means to be human, since it is the vehicle we need to know and to be known. Human beings communicate through words, and God communicates especially through his Word.
As he will do many times during his pontificate, the Pope quotes Gaudium et Spes 22.
The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come (Rom 5:14), Christ the Lord. Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling (Gaudium et Spes, 22).
Need for Redemption
The Jews had the Creation story. It helped to establish their place in the cosmos. But for Christians, there is a new revelation that comes in the Person of Jesus Christ. Part of the mystery of man is understood through the lens of his being created. However, that was not the end of the story. If Genesis 1 and 2 tell the story of Creation, chapter 3 recounts the tragedy of our parents’ first sin: Original Sin.
This fallen world needs a savior. This would be the role of Jesus Christ.
He who is the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), is himself the perfect man who has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin. Human nature, by the very fact that is was assumed, not absorbed, in him, has been raised in us also to a dignity beyond compare. For, by his Incarnation, he, the son of God, in a certain way united himself with each man. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin (Gaudium et Spes, 22).
Redemption is a new creation. Just as God created the world, he re-made it through his Son. The crucifixion of Christ is a redeeming act, but it is also a cosmic act, affecting the world around us. Just as he gives us hope for our salvation, he gives us hope for the redemption of the material world. This will happen in the new heavens and the new earth described in the Book of Revelation (cf. Rev. 21).
A Question for Christians
As Christians, we should ask ourselves: Is the world worth saving? This world is not merely a stage for the drama of human existence. We are called to care deeply about the world in which we live, giving witness and drawing it closer to Christ, fulfilling the mission he has entrusted to us with our existence. Christ came into the world at his Incarnation. He took a human body and worked with human hands. He suffered human violence before dying and rising from the dead.
The material world was not beneath him. Redemption is not an abandonment of creation but is rather God’s restoration of creation. We look at the created world as wounded, but destined for the glory of God. As Christians, we cannot afford not to care. We should share Christ’s solicitude for the world and cooperate with his work of redemption.