CCC 280 Creation is the foundation of “all God’s saving plans,” the “beginning of the history of salvation”¹ that culminates in Christ. Conversely, the mystery of Christ casts conclusive light on the mystery of creation and reveals the end for which “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”: from the beginning, God envisaged the glory of the new creation in Christ.²

CCC 400 The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination.³ Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man.⁴ Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay”.⁵ Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will “return to the ground”,⁶ for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.⁷

CCC 671 Though already present in his Church, Christ’s reign is nevertheless yet to be fulfilled “with power and great glory” by the King’s return to earth.⁸ This reign is still under attack by the evil powers, even though they have been defeated definitively by Christ’s Passover.⁹ Until everything is subject to him, “until there be realized new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church, in her sacraments and institutions, which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will pass, and she herself takes her place among the creatures which groan and travail yet and await the revelation of the sons of God.”¹⁰ That is why Christians pray, above all in the Eucharist, to hasten Christ’s return by saying to him:¹¹ Marana tha! “Our Lord, come!”¹²

CCC 735 He, then, gives us the “pledge” or “first fruits” of our inheritance: the very life of the Holy Trinity, which is to love as “God [has] loved us.”¹³ This love (the “charity” of 1 Cor 13) is the source of the new life in Christ, made possible because we have received “power” from the Holy Spirit.¹⁴

CCC 1046 For the cosmos, Revelation affirms the profound common destiny of the material world and man:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. .. in hope because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay. .. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.¹⁵

CCC 1721 God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve him, and so to come to paradise. Beatitude makes us “partakers of the divine nature” and of eternal life.¹⁶ With beatitude, man enters into the glory of Christ¹⁷ and into the joy of the Trinitarian life.

CCC 1741 Liberation and salvation. By his glorious Cross Christ has won salvation for all men. He redeemed them from the sin that held them in bondage. “For freedom Christ has set us free.”¹⁸ In him we have communion with the “truth that makes us free.”¹⁹ The Holy Spirit has been given to us and, as the Apostle teaches, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”²⁰ Already we glory in the “liberty of the children of God.”²¹

CCC 2572 As a final stage in the purification of his faith, Abraham, “who had received the promises,”²² is asked to sacrifice the son God had given him. Abraham’s faith does not weaken (“God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering.”), for he “considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead.”²³ And so the father of believers is conformed to the likeness of the Father who will not spare his own Son but will deliver him up for us all.²⁴ Prayer restores man to God’s likeness and enables him to share in the power of God’s love that saves the multitude.²⁵

CCC 2630 The New Testament contains scarcely any prayers of lamentation, so frequent in the Old Testament. In the risen Christ the Church’s petition is buoyed by hope, even if we still wait in a state of expectation and must be converted anew every day. Christian petition, what St. Paul calls {“groaning,” arises from another depth, that of creation “in labor pains” and that of ourselves “as we wait for the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.”²⁶ In the end, however, “with sighs too deep for words” the Holy Spirit “helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”²⁷

1 GCD 51.
2 Gen 1:1; cf. Rom 8:18-23.
3 Cf. Gen 3:7-16.
4 Cf. Gen 3:17,19.
5 Rom 8:21.
6 Gen 3:19; cf. 2:17.
7 Cf. Rom 5:12.
8 Lk 21:27; cf. Mt 25:31.
9 Cf. 2 Th 2:7.
10 LG 48 # 3; cf. 2 Pt 3:13; Rom 8:19-22; I Cor 15:28.
11 Cf. I Cor 11:26; 2 Pt 3:11-12.
12 1 Cor 16:22; Rev 22:17,20.
13 1 Jn 4: 12; cf. Rom 8:23; 2 Cor 1:21.
14 Acts 1:8; cf. 1 Cor 13.
15 Rom 8:19-23.
16 2 Pet 1:4; cf. Jn 17:3.
17 Cf. Rom 8:18.
18 Gal 5:1.
19 Cf. In 8:32.
20 2 Cor 17.
21 Rom 8:21.
22 Heb 11:17.
23 Gen 22:8; Heb 11:19
24 Rom 8:32.
25 Cf. Rom 8:16-21.
26 Rom 8:22-24.
27 Rom 8:26.