This article first appeared in Our Sunday Visitor magazine. Subscribe to receive the monthly magazine here.
“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and prosper for us the work of our hands —
O prosper the work of our hands!” (Ps 90:17)
There is a moment in the Mass when the priest quietly acknowledges one of the stranger aspects of the miracle that is about to take place. During the preparation of the gifts, the priest prays, “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.” He then makes a similar blessing with the wine: ” … fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink.” For many of us, these prayers are very familiar, but that shouldn’t distract us from how peculiar they are. Although we rarely give it much thought, there is something deeply counterintuitive — startling, even — in Our Lord’s decision to use the human artifacts of bread and wine rather than the divine inventions of grain and grapes to give us his body and blood. In a profound way, it is the work of human hands which the God of the universe uses to make himself sacramentally present in the world.
Image and likeness
We find in this decision an echo of the immense dignity God bestowed on human beings at the dawn of creation. Like the words of the Mass, the words of Genesis are familiar, yet we must learn to be re-surprised by what they contain:
Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.
This is a radical claim. Whereas the pagan gods of old were made in man’s image — finite, capricious, often cruel — the God of the Bible is proclaimed as the transcendent creator of time and space, of light and life, who makes us in his image and likeness. But what do we mean by this, exactly?
Theologians have traditionally interpreted the language of image and likeness as referring to the reality of personhood. Unlike an animal or a plant, each human being is a unique, unrepeatable, eternal person endowed with the gifts of rationality, self-possession and the ability to love. In addition to all this, we have also been given a share in God’s creative power. Psalm 8 expresses this truth magnificently (3-6):
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet.
He has given us dominion over the works of his hands! And this dominion involves more than simply looking after the natural world. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another” (No. 2427). As persons made in his image and likeness, ours is the task of cooperation in God’s ongoing work of creation.
Procreation and ‘sub-creation’
We see this task of cooperation play out in the opening chapters of Genesis. When God creates Adam, he doesn’t instruct him to sit back and enjoy the show. No, he invites Adam to participate in the cultivation of the world. Adam is given the task of naming the animals, and he is commanded, together with his wife, Eve, to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gn 1:28). These words are also intended for us. Like Adam and Eve, we are created in God’s image and likeness; and like them, we were made to share in God’s creative work.
One obvious way many of us are called to do this is through the sacrament of marriage. The very word “procreation” offers us a clue as to the momentous role that parents play in fulfilling the directives given to our first parents. The Catechism puts it this way: “By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents cooperate in a unique way in the Creator’s work” (No. 372). Notice that it is the spouses and parents cooperating in the Creator’s work, not the other way around. It is God who creates every human soul. At the same time, his respect for human agency is nothing short of breathtaking, since he permits his creation of new human souls to remain in some sense dependent upon the free cooperation of the parents.
When the Book of Genesis describes Adam’s fathering of Seth following Cain’s murder of Abel, it does so in conspicuous terms: “(Adam) became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth” (Gn 5:3). This language is significant for a couple of reasons. First, it reminds us that when a man and woman conceive a child, they don’t simply produce a new biological organism that shares their DNA. Much more than this, the fruit of their union is a new “someone” formed in their image and likeness. He is a person just like them, because he is made in the image and likeness of God just as they are. A second reason that the description of Adam’s fathering of Seth is significant is because it clarifies our earlier interpretation of Genesis 1:26. We see now that bearing God’s image and likeness is not only about personhood or creativity; it is also about sonship.
Just as the child exists in the image and likeness of his parents, so we exist in the image and likeness of God the Father. It is precisely as the Father’s children, moreover, that we are called to learn and share in his trade: the trade of creation. Of course, none of us are able to create in the strict philosophical sense of bringing things into being out of nothing. Only God can do that. Nevertheless, we do have the ability (and responsibility) to create in a subsidiary sense by bringing new life, beauty and order into the world using the gifts and materials the Father has given us. For many of us, this means extending his image and likeness into children of our own. For all of us, it means using our talents and gifts to incarnate his creative spirit in the world. We should therefore realize that the primordial command to be fruitful and multiply encompasses more than just our capacity for procreation, precious though that is. Understood more broadly, the command also extends to our capacity for art and craft. Pope St. John Paul II touched on these themes in his 1999 Letter to Artists (No. 1). He wrote:
Through his “artistic creativity” man appears more than ever “in the image of God,” and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous “material” of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power.
The pope’s words remind us that when Scripture calls God “the author of beauty” (Wis 13:3), the authorship it describes is one in which the Father invites us to share. Needless to say, the work of God always remains infinitely greater than — and indeed the very source of — our own meager contributions. Nevertheless, the Lord has so ordained it that we should become not merely translators or transcribers but true co-authors with him in the composition of beautiful things. When Michelangelo steps back to survey his masterpiece, he does so as one who has received a divine spark. It therefore comes as no surprise that art possesses a unique ability to pierce the soul and soften the hearts of men.
In his 1947 essay “On Fairy-Stories,” the British novelist J.R.R. Tolkien meditated at length on the human capacity to create a “secondary world,” that is, a fantasy realm which nonetheless bears the signature of the divine. Describing this process as one of “sub-creation,” Tolkien explained: “We make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.” These words could just as easily have been voiced by G.K. Chesterton, who, writing some 20 years earlier in his classic work “The Everlasting Man,” commented on that capacity for art and craft which renders human beings so distinct: “This creature was truly different from all other creatures; because he was a creator as well as a creature.” For Chesterton as for Tolkien, there is great significance in the fact that in the natural world it is only human beings who can tell stories and produce art and craft. Of all the creatures on earth, it is man and man alone who possesses the power of sub-creation. When the electrician completes a circuit and flips the switch after many hours of labor, the words of the Creator become, in some sense, his own: “Let there be light.”
The Mystery of Co-Redemption
So far we have considered how our being made in the Father’s image and likeness allows us to participate in his creative work through the gifts of procreation and sub-creation. But if our Catholic faith tells us anything, it is that we are called to be more than just procreators or sub-creators, for we are also called to be co-redeemers. In a sublime way, it is not just material creation but spiritual re-creation that the Lord invites us to share in. “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake,” writes St. Paul, “and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24). It is a verse that lies at the bleeding heart of the mystery of co-redemption, and it raises the question of what could possibly be lacking in Christ’s afflictions.
The answer presents itself to us every time we look in the mirror. We are the ones, with our frail and wayward wills and our visceral aversion to suffering, who are so routinely lacking. For in truth Jesus does not force his redemption on anyone; it is always our “yes,” our fiat, that he lovingly awaits before his redemption can be completed in us. It is only when we come to terms with this spiritual drama that we can begin to make sense of Christ’s cryptic words in the Gospel of John (14:12-14):
Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
At first glance, the suggestion that we will do greater works than the Son of God seems baffling, if not downright blasphemous. Yet we know that Jesus can commit no blasphemy, and he means what he says.
In his commentary on the passage, St. Thomas Aquinas offers the following explanation:
(Jesus) is saying in effect: The works that I do are so great that they are a sufficient sign of my divinity; but if these are not enough for you, then look at the works I will do through others. For the strongest sign of great power is when a person does extraordinary things not only by himself but also through others.
Following St. Augustine, Aquinas maintains that Christ’s redemption of sinners is a work which is greater than his earthly miracles, and greater even than the creation of the world. For whereas creation has a purely physical effect, the redemption of a soul has a spiritual effect; and whereas the heavens and the earth will pass away, the soul lasts forever. Thus when Christ works his redemption in us, he is doing something more marvelous than the creation of light; through the grace of his sacraments, he makes us “participants of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4). And when this happens, “greater works than these” await us. Not, to be sure, on account of anything we can achieve on our own power, but because the Redeemer is now working through us: “and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).
The work of our hands
Our Lord’s decision to institute the holy Eucharist using the work of human hands is neither an accident nor an aberration; it is part and parcel of the logic of his creation. It is the same logic whereby man, made in the Father’s image and likeness, is called to become co-creator with God. And our appreciation for this logic ought to influence every aspect of our lives. When we feel discouraged, we should remember that we have some vital role to play in restoring the beauty and integrity of creation. When we feel anxious over some question of discernment, we should remember that God gave us free will not to confuse or ensnare us, but to allow us to share in his divine plan. When we feel apathetic or indifferent, we should remember that we have been given a real responsibility for the salvation of souls, most especially our own.
Last but not least, when we feel overwhelmed or disheartened in the face of whatever work we are called to do in this life, we should remember that the work of our hands is always worthwhile, if only we unite it to the work of our heavenly Father. It is this signal Christian truth which Pope St. John Paul II described in his 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens as a “gospel of work,” for it contains the good news that man “shares by his work in the activity of the Creator” (No. 25). By virtue of this fact, all of our work bears an immeasurable dignity, no matter how menial or tedious or frustrating it appears (Laborem Exercens, No. 27):
Sweat and toil, which work necessarily involves the present condition of the human race, present the Christian and everyone who is called to follow Christ with the possibility of sharing lovingly in the work that Christ came to do. … By enduring the toil of work in union with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates with the Son of God for the redemption of humanity. He shows himself a true disciple of Christ by carrying the cross in his turn every day in the activity that he is called upon to perform.
When approached in a spirit of faith, our daily toil becomes nothing less than an active participation in Christ’s saving work. “For we are God’s co-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building” (1 Cor 3:9, NABRE). We are laborers in the vineyard of the Lord, and ours is the joy of knowing that the same God who turns bread and wine into his body and blood can transform all our efforts into instruments of his divine grace.
