Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Greetings from Uganda!
One of the many beautiful things about life in this country once one gets away from the city is that one is forced to follow the natural rhythm of alternating light and darkness. At a recent study retreat for the restoration of traditional creation theology, one of the participants took a particular interest in the 24-hour day-night cycle and the seven-day weekly cycle, since he insisted, quite correctly, that if the literal and obvious interpretation of "yom" or "day" in Genesis 1, handed down by the overwhelming majority of Jewish and patristic commentators, is correct, there must be a reason why Almighty God established these rhythms. In our book I Have Spoken to You from Heaven: A Catholic Defense of Creation in Six Days we explain at length how the seven-day cycle is written into the biosphere and into the liturgical life of the Church, and we show how the desacralization of the Lord's Day has gone hand-in-hand with the substitution of theistic evolutionary mythology for the sacred history of Genesis.
In this newsletter, I would like to reflect for a few moments on the importance of the day-night rhythm for a healthy, happy, and holy human life. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself ratified the constant tradition of the Church that God established the alternating 12 hours of light and darkness on the first day of creation when He created the light to alternate with darkness to constitute the 24-hour day when He said, "Are there not 12 hours in a day? If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world" (Luke 11:9). The violation of the Lord's Day and the seven-day rhythm instituted by God for our benefit from the beginning of creation has wrought havoc upon our bodies and souls, but modern technology has also disrupted our physical and spiritual equilibrium by disrupting the natural alternation of light and darkness. As one medical doctor has observed:
Exposure to artificial light is one of the largest often-overlooked health risks of living in the 21st century. Your early ancestors had no such worries, as their day started and ended with the rise and fall of the sun, which synchronized perfectly with their circadian rhythm.
Today, your body is still attuned to this internal clock. In the morning, bright, blue-light-rich sunlight signals to your body that it's time to wake up. At night, as the sun sets, darkness should signal to your body that it's time to sleep.
The problem is that most people living in developed countries no longer go to sleep when the sun sets.[1]
It is unfortunate that when intelligent commentators make such observations nowadays, more often than not they add that this adaptation to the day-night cycle has been established over "millions of years" of evolution, and that, for that reason, we disrupt it at our peril. In reality, the mythical millions of years of evolution would not witness the production or the establishment anything new at all, as, left to themselves, existing things would be reduced to their most probable and least-organized state in accordance with the inexorable law of entropy. On the contrary, our adaptation to the day-night cycle bears witness to the loving providence and divine wisdom of our Creator. When we read in the sacred history of Genesis that God made the sun, moon and stars for "signs and seasons and for days and years" (Genesis 1:14), we should be conscious of the fact that God made the very rhythms of the cosmos for our benefit. Sunrise and sunset should remind us to praise Him who created us out of love to share one life with the Most Holy Trinity.
On a different note, I would like repeat what I have said many times before, that the videos on the Kolbe home page are an excellent way to introduce and win over Catholics of good will to the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation. Yesterday I met a Ugandan seminary professor who learned about the Kolbe Center from a parish priest in Kampala who urged him to watch the videos on the Kolbe home page. The professor, who teaches philosophy at a major seminary, was completely won over to the traditional doctrine of creation by watching them. I urge all of our readers to encourage open-minded Catholics to view the videos on the Kolbe home page in this order:
The video "Kolbe Interviews" should also be of interest to people who are concerned about the formation of young Catholics. When the interviews were conducted a few years ago, three of the four speakers were homeschooled teenagers and one was a Catholic university student. None of them had decided upon his or her vocation. Just a few years later, one of the four is a Carmelite sister in the United States, one has entered a Cistercian monastery in Austria, and another one has become a postulant with the Missionaries of St. John the Baptist in the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky. It is no surprise that the faith of our youth who embrace the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation has a firm foundation, and that from this firm foundation they are well disposed to discern and answer God's call, whatever it may be.
This week, Fr. Jonathan Opio, Greg Clovis and I will be speaking to priests and seminarians in the Diocese of Siroti. Please keep us and the whole Kolbe Center family in your prayers.
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata,
Hugh Owen
