Thursday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 9, 2023

Genesis 2, 18-25

The Lord God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” So the Lord God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man. So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.”  That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.

“It is not good for the man to be alone.”  Throughout the first account of the creation of the world as told in the Book of Genesis, God created something, placed it somewhere, and declared that it was “good”.  Here, breaking the rhythm, he finds something that is “not good”, that is, something not finished.  We might wonder why the all-knowing, all-powerful God created something that was not complete, but it was not as though God had made a mistake or miscalculation.  Rather, he does this for our edification.  The “man” whom God had made, the adamah, from the Hebrew word for earth, contained all that was necessary to be human, but was still incomplete.  Now, God does not create a second adamah to keep the first company.  Instead, he creates the man and woman both from the adamah.  They are created as belonging to each other from the beginning.  They are created in  intimacy with each other.

“He took out one of his ribs.”  The original mutual dignity of the man and the woman was created at this time, as shown by this verse, for the Hebrew word usually translated as “rib” is better translated as “side”: God split the adamah down the middle and then built the halves into full, and fully complementary, human beings.  Two ways, in fact, of being human.

“This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”  The man exclaims this with joy at his recognition of his helpmate.  Though he understands that she is different in appearance as well as distinct from him, he also sees that they are in every way equal to one another, mutual helpmates, created for each other by a deliberate act of Almighty God.  He also recognizes that they are made for intimacy with each other.  She is not flesh of another’s flesh, but of his.  When God creates a man or a woman today, he creates that person with a particular vocation, usually to marriage.  The person whom the other is to marry is not left up to chance by God, but fully laid out in his Providence.  A person is created to marry a particular person whom God creates with the vocation to marry the first person.  A husband and wife are literally made for each other by God.  As the author of Genesis comments, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.”  This “clinging” is not merely physical or emotional but exists on a deeper level for which the physical embrace is but a sign.  And this deeper “clinging”, as real and as powerful as it is, is but the sign of Christ and the soul that belongs to him.

We pray for young people who are called to marriage that they will search for the one person for whom they were created in this world, and that they will find them.  We pray for married couples to persevere in the vocation to which God has called them that they may be a sign to us all of the constancy of God’s love and his desire for union with us.