Rest is the final pattern of all that God has made. In time, in place, each thing has its own mode: it is created thus, and here and now. The singleness of sun and moon, of rock and flower and tiger; the separateness of men, each man a person unique and at last alone—here might seem a broken pattern, each thing good but each thing solitary. But on the seventh day of creation God rests. He blesses and sanctifies the day of his resting, and with it all that he has made: the whole creation is one in that ascription of praise to the creator of all.

The sabbath-rest of God is God’s contemplation of himself as creator: in it the unity and goodness of the things he has made are revealed. They are his: they are one in him. So, in the history of his chosen people, the seventh day came to be observed as a day of rest and gladness, a still point in the changing world for man to pause and remember. “See that thou keep my sabbath; because it is a sign between me and you in your generations: that you may know I am the Lord who sanctify you. ... It is an everlasting covenant between me and the children of Israel, and a perpetual sign. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and in the seventh he ceased from work.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” This is the seventh of the sayings of the Son of God in his sermon on the mount.

When beginning to speak in detail of this ineffable Mystery of our Redemption, we must presuppose that it was the remedy and medicine for the universal fall and misery of mankind, and especially of the original sin through which mankind remained perverted and crippled. Since we cannot estimate the efficacy of a medicine unless we realise how serious is the malady, we must consider this first. For this we must understand first principles.

In order to understand this doctrine, we must take as its foundation the immense goodness of our Lord God, which is the principle of all His works and more particularly of this, which for its excellence is called the Work of God. As it is the nature of goodness to communicate its properties, it may be inferred that that supreme Goodness, which is the Divinity, is supremely communicative. Therefore, not content with having bestowed on His creatures their being and all they need to preserve it, His magnificence so surpassed this that, not satisfied with bestowing on them created gifts, He sought to add to them uncreated blessings, that is, communication and participation in his own bliss and glory. With this intention God created two kinds of beings, noble and capable of such great honour, namely, the angels, purely spiritual, and men who are both spiritual and corporeal. The latter, though on a much lower grade than the angels, equal them in the dignity of their final end.

We will say no more of the angels as they do not concern our subject but speak of men who were created by God for this destiny.