The Benedict Year › Reading Backwards from the Pascha › Unit 1 · Creation
Week 4 · 5–9 October 2026 · Michaelmas
In the beginning
Unit 1 · Creation: The Vigil opens with creation because that night is a new creation.
Session A · the reading
About 55 minutes. Open and read aloud before any framing: no introduction, no “today we’re looking at”. Scripture first, then the Father.
- Genesis 1:1–2:3
- Ephrem, Hymns on Paradise, the first hymn, aloud
Session B · the argument
About 35 minutes, on another day. Never both in one sitting.
Video. Genesis 1–11
Unanswerable. What’s the seventh day for, if the work was finished on the sixth? Hold it; it comes back in week 7.
The Tile Board
Add a card: Light on the first day, with the passage and today’s date. Pencil a line to another card only if the child sees one.
Books this week
Optional: one piece of media
The Tree of Life (2011), the creation sequence only, about twenty minutes. Rated PG-13: watch it first. Watched together, with nothing said about why it was chosen; how the list was made.
The Vigil’s first reading. Read it as poetry, not as a lab report.
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