The First Word and the Last Voice: Be Light Made and It Is Done
Old Testament: Genesis 1:1, 3
In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. ... And God said: Be light made. And light was made.
Old Testament, also: Psalms 32:6, 9
By the word of the Lord the heavens were established; and all the power of them by the spirit of his mouth: ... For he spoke and they were made: he commanded and they were created.
New Testament: John 1:1-3; Apocalypse 21:5-6
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. ... And he that sat on the throne, said: Behold, I make all things new. And he said to me: Write, for these words are most faithful and true. And he said to me: It is done. I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end. To him that thirsteth, I will give of the fountain of the water of life, freely.
The connection
The Bible opens with God speaking. "In the beginning God created heaven, and earth... And God said: Be light made. And light was made" (Genesis 1:1, 3). The psalm names what did the work: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were established... For he spoke and they were made" (Psalms 32:6, 9). John tells us who that word is, and he begins with the first words of Genesis: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things were made by him" (John 1:1-3). The Bible closes with the same speaker. From the throne comes a voice: "Behold, I make all things new... It is done. I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end" (Apocalypse 21:5-6). The words are chosen to answer the first page. Genesis has fiat lux, et facta est lux; John has omnia per ipsum facta sunt; the throne says factum est, and the Greek runs the same way, egeneto in Genesis and John, gegonan from the throne. He who said "be made" at the beginning says "it is done" at the end, and He names Himself the beginning, he arche, the word of en arche, the very first words of Genesis and of John. The voice has already sounded once before the end, when the seventh angel pours out his vial and "there came a great voice out of the temple from the throne, saying: It is done" (Apocalypse 16:17). The Fathers heard the Word in the first command. Tertullian: "Then, therefore, does the Word also Himself assume His own form and glorious garb, His own sound and vocal utterance, when God says, 'Let there be light'" (Against Praxeas 7). Origen: "Christ is, in a manner, the demiurge, to whom the Father says, 'Let there be light,' and 'Let there be a firmament'" (Commentary on John I.22). And Clement puts the first page and the last together in one sentence: "the Lord Himself is called 'Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,' 'by whom all things were made, and without whom not even one thing was made'" (Stromata VI.16).
Moral sense
Between the first word and the last there is a middle one. On the sixth day God finished His works (Genesis 2:2, in the Septuagint), and on the sixth day of the week the Word made flesh said from the Cross, "It is consummated" (John 19:30). Every soul lives inside that sentence. The Word that called light out of darkness speaks into a man as well: "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts" (2 Corinthians 4:6). What God begins in a soul He means to finish, and He does it by speaking, so the first work of the one who hears is to let the Word be obeyed as the light obeyed, at once and without reply. The obedience is the whole of it: the light did not deliberate, and nothing stood between the word and the work. Our own words are small copies of His. They either serve the Word that made us or they unmake things, and a man is known by whether his speech builds toward the "it is done" of God.
Anagogical sense
The Catechism sets John's prologue under the first page of Genesis: "In the beginning was the Word... all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (CCC 291). The history that begins with that Word ends with Him. John sees heaven opened and a rider whose "name is called, The Word of God" (Apocalypse 19:13), and the great multitude answers Him "as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunders, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord our God the Almighty hath reigned" (Apocalypse 19:6). Creation was called out of nothing by a word; at the end it answers with a shout. Then the one voice speaks the last creating word, "Behold, I make all things new", and the gift that follows it is freely given: "To him that thirsteth, I will give of the fountain of the water of life, freely" (Apocalypse 21:6).
The Fathers
Tertullian, Against Praxeas 7: "Then, therefore, does the Word also Himself assume His own form and glorious garb, His own sound and vocal utterance, when God says, 'Let there be light.'" Origen, Commentary on John I.22: "Christ is, in a manner, the demiurge, to whom the Father says, 'Let there be light,' and 'Let there be a firmament.'" Clement of Alexandria, Stromata VI.16: "the Lord Himself is called 'Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,' 'by whom all things were made, and without whom not even one thing was made.'"
Warrant
John opens with the first words of Genesis, In principio in the Vulgate and en arche in the Greek, and calls the Word the maker of all things, but he does not name Genesis a figure, so the badge is patristic. The link is carried in the words: Genesis 1:3 fiat and facta est, John 1:3 facta sunt, Apocalypse 21:6 and 16:17 factum est; in the Greek, egeneto in Genesis 1:3 and John 1:3, gegonan and gegonen from the throne; and the one on the throne is initium, arche, the beginning. The reading of the first command as the Word's is drawn by Tertullian and Origen, and Clement joins Alpha and Omega to John 1:3. The Cross as the finished work is a further step on the Septuagint of Genesis 2:2, which ends the work on the sixth day.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 291.
The verses
Genesis 1:1 · Genesis 1:3 · Psalms 32:6 · Psalms 32:9 · John 1:1 · John 1:2 · John 1:3 · Apocalypse 21:5 · Apocalypse 21:6
