(Gen 1, 14-19) God made the two great lights
[14] Then God said: "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years, [15] and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth." And so it happened: [16] God made the two great lights, the greater one to govern the day, and the lesser one to govern the night; and he made the stars. [17] God set them in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth, [18] to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw how good it was. [19] Evening came, and morning followed - the fourth day.
(CCC 295) We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom (Cf. Wis 9:9). It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from God's free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness: "For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created" (Rev 4:11). Therefore the Psalmist exclaims: "O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all"; and "The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made" (Pss 104:24; 145:9). (CCC 296) We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance (Cf. Dei Filius, can. 2-4: DS 3022-3024). God creates freely "out of nothing" (Lateran Council IV (1215): DS 800; cf. DS 3025): If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants (St. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum II, 4: PG 6, 1052).
