In the beginning—there was original innocence

            The Holy Father continues to develop his theology of the body focusing on the beginning as revealed in Genesis 2:23-25.

            Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.” Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one        flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

In the second chapter of Genesis, the most ancient text of the creation narratives, man is originally in a state of solitude. He is alone, and in a manner of speaking, in search of his own identity. He is unique in creation, unlike the animals who he has named. In the act of naming the animals of God’s creation he determines that he is a body among bodies, but that unlike the animals he shares the earth with, he, through the very prism of his body, is conscious of being alone before God.[1] Hence, man is aware of his original solitude through the body. “Through the body man is distinguished from all the animals and is separated from them, and also through the body he identifies himself as a person.”[2] Moreover, man is a subject on account of his self-awareness and determination. “The structure of the body permits him to be author of a truly human activity and thereby expresses the person.”[3] Man is therefore a person precisely in, through and with his being a body. 

            Almost simultaneous with the creation of man is this self-awareness of man’s being alone and God’s recognition that “it is not good that man should be alone.”[4]

While original solitude reveals that the personhood of man is expressed and in a sense revealed through his being a body, it also reveals that man is alone in that expression. It reveals that this being alone is not something desirable but a privation. It is for this reason that woman is created and taken from the rib, that is, from the heart of man, in order that the two, together, might become the image and likeness of God who is a communion of persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.[5] Eve becomes a sign of the beginning of that complete revelation of man in as much as she completes the revelation of the creation of man in the image and likeness of God. Eve as bride of Adam already alludes to the “Great Mystery” of the recreation and renewal of the primordial sacrament that is the original unity of man and woman.[6]

            Therefore, critical to the understanding of the creation of man as male and female is their being created in the image and likeness of God. “Man becomes the image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion.”[7] This is nothing less than a preparation for the understanding of God as Trinity. It is the communion of persons first and foremost where we have the deepest likeness to God as a communio personarum;[8] yet it is the body that reveals man, “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones,”[9] to himself as a person who is in his totality body and soul similar to God.[10] Consequently, the original unity of man and woman is realized through the body and simultaneously indicates the “incarnate communion of persons and calls for this communion.”[11] Clearly man and woman reflect in a profound and unique way within creation the very essence of God who is in Himself a communio personarum in communion with us through the second person of the Trinity, the Word Incarnate.

Article by Fr. Alejandro Valladres, Archdiocese of Mobile