Father Koch: God created us in love and for love
October 4, 2024 at 1:17 p.m.
Gospel reflection for Oct. 6, 2024, 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Question 6 from The Baltimore Catechism asks: “Why did God make you?” with the response: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”
While the Genesis accounts of creation are absent the word “love”, this sense of love is clearly evident in the intimacy of the relationship between God and the created man and woman. God fashioned the man in the mud and breathed into that clay mold the very breath of life. In animating the clay with his own breath God shares the depth of his life with the clay.
We were made for intimacy with God.
Yet, it becomes quickly apparent that love, even something as awesome as experiencing the fullness of the love of God calls for yet another to love. The man was lonely in the garden. He lacked someone with whom he could share his life, his experiences, and the ordinary moment-to-moment insights, observations, and questions. God then offers to the man the totality of the animal kingdom, which also proved ultimately to be inadequate. It was then that God chose to create the life partner for the man, not out of the clay as he had created the man, but from the very side of the man himself. This one, then called woman, was the completion of the man.
In this, God intended that the two of them would live side-by-side in an intimacy of love and companionship. The author of Genesis then adds the commentary: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.”
The use of the side of the man (rib is not the best translation of the Hebrew) indicates not a separation but a unity. The two are the same, of the same flesh. While some see this imagery, for good or for ill, as the Hebrew version of the myth of primal male motherhood found in many ancient cultures, that is not what is intended here. The man did not “give birth” to the woman. The Man provided the flesh from which she was created and fashioned by God. She is a separate creation from the man. It is God who is the author of both lives, and by extension, all life.
The intimate relationship between the man and the woman is further illustrated in the comment by the author. We use here the term “clings to his wife” although the clearer meaning of the original is to be glued to or adhered to his wife. This demonstrates again the inseparable relationship between a man and a woman.
The relationship between them solidified in a covenant, which was eventually codified in what is called a ketubah. By the time of Jesus this sense of the covenant was already in place, and the question posed by the Pharisees to Jesus here should be read in light of this covenant pact.
The Mosaic Law allowed divorce for a wide range of reasons, and the establishment of the Ketubah appears to be a tool which would limit the availability of divorce. It spells out more carefully the rights and obligations of the husband, and originally included the financial obligations as well.
Jesus is basically asked if he approved of the innovation of the ketubah or if he held to the Mosaic practice. He answers the question by affirming the newer practice while citing Moses as the source for his opinion. The permanent and indissoluble nature of the marriage covenant is borne from the very creation of the man and the woman.
Rabbi Maurice Lamm write about the ideal Jewish marriage as a triangle: “If God created man, woman, and their marriage relationship; and if the creation of man and woman is good and marriage a blessing; then God is a conscious, albeit silent, partner in the marriage. Thus, the ideal Jewish marriage is a triangle composed of two human beings and their Creator.
This cannot be, however, merely a contract absent love. God loves his creation, and intends us to love one another in the same way. We are, then, created by love and for love. Love is inseparable from God, and hence, we can never truly unlove that which we have loved before God.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.
Related Stories
Friday, October 04, 2024
E-Editions
Events
Gospel reflection for Oct. 6, 2024, 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Question 6 from The Baltimore Catechism asks: “Why did God make you?” with the response: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”
While the Genesis accounts of creation are absent the word “love”, this sense of love is clearly evident in the intimacy of the relationship between God and the created man and woman. God fashioned the man in the mud and breathed into that clay mold the very breath of life. In animating the clay with his own breath God shares the depth of his life with the clay.
We were made for intimacy with God.
Yet, it becomes quickly apparent that love, even something as awesome as experiencing the fullness of the love of God calls for yet another to love. The man was lonely in the garden. He lacked someone with whom he could share his life, his experiences, and the ordinary moment-to-moment insights, observations, and questions. God then offers to the man the totality of the animal kingdom, which also proved ultimately to be inadequate. It was then that God chose to create the life partner for the man, not out of the clay as he had created the man, but from the very side of the man himself. This one, then called woman, was the completion of the man.
In this, God intended that the two of them would live side-by-side in an intimacy of love and companionship. The author of Genesis then adds the commentary: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.”
The use of the side of the man (rib is not the best translation of the Hebrew) indicates not a separation but a unity. The two are the same, of the same flesh. While some see this imagery, for good or for ill, as the Hebrew version of the myth of primal male motherhood found in many ancient cultures, that is not what is intended here. The man did not “give birth” to the woman. The Man provided the flesh from which she was created and fashioned by God. She is a separate creation from the man. It is God who is the author of both lives, and by extension, all life.
The intimate relationship between the man and the woman is further illustrated in the comment by the author. We use here the term “clings to his wife” although the clearer meaning of the original is to be glued to or adhered to his wife. This demonstrates again the inseparable relationship between a man and a woman.
The relationship between them solidified in a covenant, which was eventually codified in what is called a ketubah. By the time of Jesus this sense of the covenant was already in place, and the question posed by the Pharisees to Jesus here should be read in light of this covenant pact.
The Mosaic Law allowed divorce for a wide range of reasons, and the establishment of the Ketubah appears to be a tool which would limit the availability of divorce. It spells out more carefully the rights and obligations of the husband, and originally included the financial obligations as well.
Jesus is basically asked if he approved of the innovation of the ketubah or if he held to the Mosaic practice. He answers the question by affirming the newer practice while citing Moses as the source for his opinion. The permanent and indissoluble nature of the marriage covenant is borne from the very creation of the man and the woman.
Rabbi Maurice Lamm write about the ideal Jewish marriage as a triangle: “If God created man, woman, and their marriage relationship; and if the creation of man and woman is good and marriage a blessing; then God is a conscious, albeit silent, partner in the marriage. Thus, the ideal Jewish marriage is a triangle composed of two human beings and their Creator.
This cannot be, however, merely a contract absent love. God loves his creation, and intends us to love one another in the same way. We are, then, created by love and for love. Love is inseparable from God, and hence, we can never truly unlove that which we have loved before God.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.