And the LORD God said: "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." (Gen 2:18)

This sentence of God introduces us to the biblical world of couples. Why does God say that solitude is not good? Because in solitude we cannot love or be loved. From the very beginning, from the creation of the world, we observe God's wonderful design. God wants man to exist in this world as male and female. This mysterious difference between man and woman is immeasurably dear to him.

Our journey through Scripture shows us how God wishes to act, in the history of salvation, through the communion of men and women, through couples. In the texts that follow we shall try to trace the biblical couples through their concrete history. Hebrew tradition says that man and woman represent heaven and earth. They are always directed towards one another, dependent on one another, watching one another. This is an image of God and his people. In the New Covenant the bond between man and woman becomes a sacrament and an image of the union between Christ and the Church.

God wills man and woman from the beginning, from creation itself. But he proceeds slowly … In his Theology of the Body St John Paul II, says that man, created "in the image of God", is presented also as a partner of the Absolute. Pope Wojtyła writes that man is God's partner. Yet this partner of God experiences original solitude; although he is in paradise, enjoying unimaginable bliss, and God is "within reach", man is nevertheless "alone".  Scripture says that "there was not found a helper fit for him" (Gen 2:20). Man wants to share the love he received in the act of creation with someone like himself. Adam discovered his solitude by naming the animals and realising how essentially he differed from them.  (cf. Gen 2, 20) God "understands" Adam. Adam would like to share love with someone like himself. These words about solitude at the beginning of our text are the introduction to the creation of woman.

Within the creation of man something wonderful happens: good news for every generation of humanity. We go on to read: "So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. Of the rib which he had taken from the man the Lord God made a woman." (Gen 2,21-22). One interpretation of verse 21 says that God covers the bone with flesh, and in this way "shapes" the woman, whose origin is from the "flesh and bone" of the first human being (the man). She is close to him, says Pope John Paul, she has the same dignity; they belong to one another in an extraordinary way.

In biblical anthropology "bones" express a very important component of the body; since among the Hebrews there was no precise distinction between "body" and "soul" (the body was understood as the outward manifestation of the person), "bones" denoted the human "essence" (cf. e.g. Ps 139:15: "my frame was not hidden from thee"). Thus "bone of my bones" can be understood in terms of relationship, as "being of being"; "flesh of my flesh" signifies that, despite different bodily characteristics, woman represents the same personhood that man has. Eve - woman is destined to become man's true companion; she is taken from Adam's body, for it is only when someone is united with another who is close to them by nature that the union becomes indissoluble.

Rabbis, the teachers of the Jewish faith, ask why did God create Eve from a rib and not from the head? So as to prevent woman from dominating man. Why was she not created from a foot? So as to prevent man from ruling over her. God chose the rib, that is, man's own essence, so that they might have the same dignity.  While God, with his angels, stands above man, and the animals are inferior to him, woman is the one who stands beside man, they are called to walk together in love. In this "love story" Scripture shows the immeasurable dignity of the existence of man as male and as female, who are called to love one another as God loves (cf. Jn 13:34)

Also interesting is the sleep, or, as Pope John Paul II writes - "torpor" which God casts upon the first man. This sleep underlines the exclusivity of God's action in the work of creating woman; man was not consciously involved in it at all. Torpor is a kind of wonder, we remain "astonished", transfixed" before the presence of another, because we did not create him or her. Pope Francis says that the other person is "holy ground" before which I must "take off my shoes" like Moses when the LORD appeared to him in the burning bush. (cf. Gen 3:5)  God uses his "rib" only to emphasise the shared nature of man and woman. Pope Wojtyła writes that the expression "torpor" (Heb. tardemah) or "sleep" appears in Scripture when extraordinary events are to take place during or immediately after sleep. Alongside the creation of man, the creation of woman is an extraordinary event. These creative events have shaped the history of humanity, just as God conceived it from the beginning in his genius.

 

Love and Communion

When Adam awakes from sleep, the first love song in the history of humanity arises.: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh".  (Gen 2:23). The Jewish rabbis say that Eve was very beautiful. Adam is enraptured by Eve's beauty. At last he can love. There is no rivalry, no competing, no demanding, no domination. Adam and Eve are in God. The harmony of their communion is perfect, not in a moral sense, but in that human nature in them is so imbued with the Spirit that one loves the other and finds one's own "self" in the other.

St Peter Lombard in his Sentences asks why woman was created from Adam's rib, and not from his head or his feet. And he explains: "In this way she was formed neither to be his ruler nor his subject, but his companion“ (Sentences 3, 18, 3). The mystery of the difference between existing as man and as woman is very profound. Essential. The survival of our civilisation depends on the relationship between man and woman. Only from their unity and harmony does new life come forth.

 

The Fall

Life is a serious adventure, and so this beautiful harmony of Adam and Eve does not last long. They had little time for a honeymoon, like many married couples who must soon return, after the wedding, to the everyday round of life. The serpent, the proud old Enemy, as the liturgy of Holy Week calls him, attacks this communion; he attacks the woman above all, because in her is found "the fountain of life" (cf. Ps 36:9)  she is the Bearer of life, a mother and an image of tenderness. The devil, as the opposite of everything woman is, made himself known only once he noticed Eve. Woman is a danger to the devil.

The Fathers of the Church say that Eve sinned through the ear, because she listened to the Evil One's flattery. Adam sinned through false empathy. He did not tell the truth to his companion. He loved naively, and fell. Then chaos breaks in; accusation and fear enter the relationship, and human nature becomes vulnerable, mortal.

The well-known French Catholic philosopher and writer Fabrice Hadjadj, in order to show the disorder that reigns in man after the fall, gives the example of how wounded man idolises his latest car with all its new equipment, while he despises the wonder of his own body, which is a marvellous masterpiece. Yet, with the fall into original sin, the adventure of love did not come to an end. God does not give up. Never. Not even at the cost of his Son's death. God calls them to fruitfulness (cf. Gen 1:28) and later Adam gives his companion the name Eve, meaning mother of all the living. (cf. Gen  3:20)

Discord entered the world of man and woman, but attraction remained. Despite disputes and difficulties in many marriages, the history of Adam and Eve shows how God always continues to act and to help. Even when mutual accusations arise, when hiding, flight, coldness in the relationship set in,  feelings of inferiority and various words used to humiliate the other, man or woman. Be very careful if you make a woman cry, says Jewish wisdom, for God counts her tears.

Woman came forth from man's side; she was not made from his feet, to be trampled upon, nor from his head, to be superior, but from his side, to be his equal, a little lower, to be protected; she was made close to the heart, to be Loved.

God goes out in search of husband and wife. He is in love with the family. The opening sentences of the Bible do not speak so much of infatuation, which is passing. They speak of family, of fruitfulness. After the stage of falling in love comes a love that is fruitful, and then, after years and years of shared married life, comes mercy.

 

New Creation

The family is proof that, even after the fall, God continues his work. Indeed, God sends his Son Jesus Christ into a family: that of Joseph and Mary, in order to continue the adventure begun with Adam and Eve. Jesus Christ died and rose again for every family, for every Adam and Eve of our generation. What is more! Jesus Christ is the new Adam, who has renewed man even more wonderfully than his state before the fall into original sin. Eve is the Church.

Each of us belongs to the body called the Church. The Mystical Body. The too-late Body. This is true theology of the body. Just think, it all began with this first couple. Adam and Eve. Our roots are good, and the future even more beautiful. In the new Adam. In the beauty of Eve the bride, in whom the Fathers of the Church also see Mary, Mother of the Church and our Mother, lies the firmness of our hope. The woman of the third millennium, as St John Paul II called her, shows her love for every family. Queen of the family. Pray for us!