Renata Milán Morales
Adam and Eve Man and woman have been created, willed by God, in perfect equality as human persons. ‘Being man’ or being ‘woman’ is a reality which is good and willed by God. Man and woman possess a dignity which comes to them immediately from God and both have one and the same dignity “in the image of God”. In their being-man and being-woman, they reflect the Creator’s wisdom and goodness.
God is not in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective “perfections” of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband.
God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.” 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.” Man discovers woman as another ‘I’, sharing the same humanity.
Communion
Man and woman were made “for each other” – not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be “helpmate” to the other, for they are equal as persons and complementary as masculine and feminine. In marriage God unites them in such a way that, by forming “one flesh”, they can transmit human life. By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents co-operate in a unique way in the Creator’s work.
In God’s plan man and woman have the vocation of ‘subduing’ the Earth as stewards of God. This sovereignty is not to be an arbitrary and destructive domination. God calls man and woman to share in his providence toward other creatures; hence their responsibility for the world God has entrusted to them.
The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him. The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice”. This grace of original holiness was to share in “divine life”.
Harmony
By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed. If he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called ‘original justice’.
The ‘mastery’ over the world that God offered man from the beginning was realised above all within man himself: mastery of self. The first man was ordered in his whole being because he was free from the weakness that leads him to the pleasures of the senses – earthly goods and self-assertion – contrary to his reason.
The sign of man’s familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden. There he lives “to till it and keep it”. Work is not yet a burden, but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation. This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God’s plan, will be lost by the sin of our first parents.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 369-384.