The weekend of February 3-5 was hopefully a very illuminating and fruitful one for the youths, youth leaders, teachers and parents who attended the seminar on Y Is Sex Worth Waiting 4 at the WOW Millennium chapel. The seminar was the brainchild of the Diocesan Youth Commission (KDZ), the Cana Movement and Dar Guzeppa Debono of Gozo. In view of this and other similar initiatives, it is pertinent to point out a theme that is frequently neglected in this area and to which the first account of creation in the Book of Genesis hints.

The refrain "And God saw that it was good" appears six times in the first account of creation in the Book of Genesis (Gen 1,4.10.12.18.21.25) This sentence encourages the reader to imagine God sitting back, while surveying his creation of the single works.

God approves of the masterly handiwork coming out of his own hands. But these six times that God looks around him with satisfaction have a crescendo to them! God's creation so far has merely been a build-up to his grand masterpiece. The seventh time, God congratulates himself in a superlative manner: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Gen 1,31).

The superlative comment of the Hebrew original can be translated into "very good, excellent, superb", but also "the best"! The author ingeniously juggles around this symbolic superlative description literally as well. The verb "he created" is used seven times in the creation account. The divine name is mentioned 35 times, and the phrase "heaven and earth" occurs 21 times: all are multiples of seven. The number seven is the biblical symbolic number for perfection. Furthermore, in the original Hebrew text of Genesis, the first verse has seven words; the second 14!

From every point of view, creation and its descriptive account is a pointer to the perfection that God has created. The Genesis account of creation is meant to be a meditation on the meaning of creation, of what is living, with mankind as its centre and summit: it was only after God created man that he could be described as observing: "it was very good". This exclamation is the seventh and the culmination in the series of approvals in the eyes of God. There is nothing negative that mars the picture; nothing can be added to its perfection. Nothing is superfluous.

The fact that this superlative approval is made by God himself at the very conclusion of his act of creation indicates that he sees perfection not only in the individual creatures themselves, but also, and in a particular manner, in their inter-relationships. God specifically approves of the harmonious perfection that exists among his created beings. The perfection that God sees in his creation is enhanced by the relationship between the creatures themselves.

And this brings us to the crux of the matter: no man is an island. The Genesis creation account and, particularly, the divine approval of the harmonious relationship between the created beings, reinforce the adage that no man, woman or creature is an island. This implies that whatever one creature does affects the other creatures. Whoever I am, and whatever I do as a created being, has a ripple effect upon every other creature. My actions, and, indeed, my very being, contribute to the perfection that has emanated from the hands of God.

If the creation of humankind crowns God's creation, and he deemed it fit to congratulate himself for it, how much more consequential upon the whole of creation are man's being and actions? No being can consider itself neutral. No action can be deemed indifferent. Whoever we are and whatever we do affects the whole of creation. What a responsibility this is, and yet, how self-fulfilling it can be!

Fr Sciberras lectures New Testament studies at the University of Malta.

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