Thursday, December 3, 2009

Gen 2, 18 It is not good for the man to be alone

(Gen 2, 18) It is not good for the man to be alone

[18] The LORD God said: "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him."

(CCC 371) God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. The Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. "It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him" (Gen 2:18). None of the animals can be man's partner (Gen 2:19-20). The woman God "fashions" from the man's rib and brings to him elicits on the man's part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gen 2:23). Man discovers woman as another "I", sharing the same humanity. (CCC 1605) Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen 2:18). The woman, "flesh of his flesh," his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a "helpmate"; she thus represents God from whom comes our help (Cf. Gen 2:18-25). "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24). The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been "in the beginning": "So they are no longer two, but one flesh" (Mt 19:6).

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