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Excerpts of Georgette Blaquiere’s book: “Oser Vivre l’Amour” IN THE IMAGE OF GOD: In the first story of Genesis, God creates and blesses. “ God says: let there be light… and there was light…. And God saw how good it was…” However, with the creation of mankind, God’s attitude changes. Just before creating man, God stops in his work of creation. He reflects and thinks and says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”(Gen. 1, 26) Suddenly speaking in the plural (Trinity) God seems to gather a divine mysterious council. What He is about to do is so important that it needs to be thought about beforehand. Then we read, “God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.”(Gen. 1, 27) We are called by God to be his IMAGE. Likeness is the inner dynamic that will transform us, little by little, into the image of God. As St. Paul says, “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Co. 3, 18) Here is what lies deep inside EACH of us. Each of us individually, even the worst of us, carries deep inside ourselves the call to go from likeness to likeness, becoming God’s image. In fact, we frequently say of a child, “he looks more and more like his father!” The great revelation of the Gospel is that Jesus came to reveal to us the face of the Father so that “when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 Jn. 3, 2) Everything is given from the very beginning of humanity, but given as a small seed. As time passes, we, in our fullness of freedom, are called to become more and more human, meaning to become more and more the image of God, and meaning more and more HOLY! These are all the same thing! From the very beginning, holiness is our horizon. “God blessed them, saying: be fertile and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” (Gen. 1, 28) The fertility that God bestowed on mankind reflects the creation of man and woman in the image of God, the fertile Creator who is an explosion of life! This “lover of life” God has created a couple who will be, in love, his image and bearing his image will be fertile and will multiply and subdue the earth. For the creation of the material world God said, “Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures…let the earth bring forth all kinds of living creatures…” He has let these creatures reproduce by themselves, through their own inner dynamic, through their own laws. However, God speaks directly to the man and the woman with these words, “Be fertile.” Fertility is bestowed on the human couple primarily because man is made in the image of God. But is also given to prolong the human species. This point is very important in the Christian Revelation, for human sexuality is not first of all a natural necessity or a need or a pleasure given to maintain the human race as in the animal world. Rather, it is first a spiritual calling to be like God because God is Life itself and the giver of life. “Male and female he created them.” The second story of the creation is much older. It is not a historic story, certainly. In fact, it goes deeper than that because its purpose is to reveal to us God’s project for Mankind. “The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being.” (Gen. 2, 7) God takes already existing material, the clay of the ground. Man truly exists only when God has blown His breath into the clay. His breath is His Spirit, the breath of life, who is the Holy Spirit. Let us consider what purpose God had in creating man. What is his project for him. THE GRACE TO BE MAN: A- AUTHORITY: “Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and he placed there the man whom he had formed.” (Gen. 2, 8) “The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it.” (Gen. 2, 15) In the second story of the creation, the man is created before the woman. Let us speak first about man as male. God makes man from the ground, breathes into him His Spirit and establishes him to be king of the creation. He puts him in the Garden of Eden, which is to say the garden of happiness, to cultivate and care for it. This is the charism man receives from God. A charism is a free gift given for service. The first charism of man can be summed up in these words: CULTIVATE AND CARE FOR THE GARDEN. Eden symbolizes happiness. Our God is a lover of life. God asks the man, created in His image, to care for all of the life in the Garden. He is charged with making it grow and bear fruit, the same as a good gardener who cares for his garden and makes it bear all sorts of fruit. Eucharistic Prayer IV: “ Tu as fait l’homme a ton image et tu lui as confie l’univers, afin qu’en te servant, toi son Createur, il regne sur la Creation”. “ You formed man in your own likeness and set him over the whole world to serve you, his Creator, and to rule over all creatures.” In France, some people say that the peasant’s gaze alone makes the wheat or the vine grow! Just because he loves the land so much! Man is indeed tied to the life of the Creation. In the past, he knew this. Does he still know it? We believe that he does, especially when we hear of some farmers who refuse to sterilize their land, even for money. We can also make a comparison to the parable of the good shepherd. The Good Shepherd takes care of his sheep and protects them, leads them to the good grass and guarantees their freedom to live. “They will come in and go out and find pasture.”(John 10, 9) Man is the good shepherd of the world, ready to lay down his own life to protect the sheep from the wolf that, like a thief, “comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy.” (John 10, 10) Laying down one’s own life is the foundation of all authority. The word “authority” comes from the Latin word “augere” which means to increase or to make grow. In the Gospel, authority is never the imposition of one’s will on someone else; rather, it is the grace to make life and freedom for another grow by giving oneself. Jesus reveals this to us about God himself and this is what is offered to mankind. B- GUARDIAN OF THE LAW: “The Lord God gave man this order: you are free to eat from the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and bad. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.” (Gen. 2, 16-17) To allow growth, we need boundaries and tutors, at least for a time. This is the purpose of the law, for “before faith came, we were held in custody under law… the law was our disciplinarian for Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” (Ga. 3, 23) So, the second masculine charism is that of protecting the law, enforcing what is allowed and what is forbidden. This is why God speaks to Adam first after the original sin. Modern man does not like the words “law, allowed, forbidden.” Yet, through the gift of the Law to Israel, God gave Himself. Later, Jesus says that he did not come to abolish the law but to accomplish it, to give it its full meaning and purpose. The forbidden fruit is forbidden only to protect it and allow it to mature. Law allows man to structure himself and get to know who he is. Psychologists are agreed in telling us that a child who grows without restraints or laws spends his time trying to know who he is. When we tell a child, “No, you are not allowed to do this because you are too young,” we are doing two things for him: We are helping the child realize that he is still a child, and not yet an adult. We are giving him the desire to grow into an adult, to be able to do what his Daddy does. We release in him dynamism for growth, which is vital, giving him the desire and the will to fight to build himself and grow. If a child has everything he wants and has nothing to conquer, what is there for him to fight for? Why would he want to grow? Without this desire, he will lose the taste for life and will lose his identity. Is he a child or an adult? He becomes the slave of his impulses, mistaking them for freedom. He becomes unable to commit to anything. When we tell a child, “Do what you want, choose your own law or don’t choose any if you don’t feel like it,” we burden him with something he is not yet able to bear. He becomes frustrated with his right to be a child because he does not yet have the strength to assume his own life. This frustration can be very dangerous for his future. He risks finding refuge in dreams, drugs, and violence. We all know of children who refuse to grow up and adults who stay adolescent their whole life. To this still primal man, God says something like this: “I am God and you are man. Here is what you can do and here is what you cannot because I am God and you are man.” He allows this man to find his right place and at the same time he releases in him this inner dynamism, which will create in him the desire to become what he was created for, the son of the Father, and the image of God. From the very beginning, God’s words are words of life and words for life. When he says, “The moment you eat from it (the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil) you are surely doomed to die,” God is not threatening man. Rather, he is warning him of the inevitable consequences of ignoring the commandments he has given him for living his life, just as we would tell a child, “If you touch the fire, you’ll get burnt.” C- PATERNITY: The power to name… It seems that God is not yet satisfied with his creation, man. After each act of creation it is recorded that God saw how good it was. This is the meaning of a blessing. “To bless” in Latin is “benedicere,” which means, “to speak well.” God seems to be holding back his blessing for Adam. He says, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Something in Adam remains incapable of growth, of life, because he is alone. Aloneness will lead him to the gates of death. Then God decides, “I will make a suitable partner for him.” It appears that God hesitates. “So the Lord God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man…” Once again God takes from the ground and creates. He brings all these animals to Adam to give him another grace, which will allow man to participate even more in His divine creation power. “He brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name.” Therefore, the third charism given to man, and probably the most important, is the power to name. To say, “You are a cat. You are a bird. You are a dog” is to signify the identity of each. In a way it grants the animals permission to live as they are, in the name of this same God who calls each of us by name. The good shepherd calls his sheep by name. This is a paternal grace, a grace of paternity rooted in the Holy Spirit. It means much more than a simple paternity of reproduction. According to Jewish tradition, Jewishness is passed on through the mother. In order to be a Jew one has to have a Jewish mother. Paternity is first of all a spiritual adventure, recognition of the child, the gift of the name. When John the Baptist was born, those present were surprised when his mother, Elizabeth, gave him his name despite the fact that Zachary was mute. They turned to Zachary, asking him to write on a tablet what he was thinking. “His name is John,” he wrote. According to Jewish law, Joseph is considered the real father of Jesus. “You are to name him Jesus” (Mat. 1, 21), the angel tells him. In a way Joseph is entitled by God to exercise paternal authority. We must address a very important daily reality, which is that you men have the power to give existence to your children when you name them. You recognize them. You look at them for what they are and how they are unique. You legally declare them when they are born. Still, this is not enough. Often teachers who ask their students if they can meet with their father get this reply: “My father is far too busy to take care of me” or “My father doesn’t even look at me except to criticize me.” We have here a serious problem! Children have a vital need to be acknowledged by their father, to exist in the life of their father, to be recognized by name, not solely through their successes or failures. They have a vital need to feel begotten by their father. Often, the role of the father is reduced to dispensing punishment and correction, when it needs to be first about recognition, encouragement, and confirmation. Sometimes it can happen that young women are frigid because their father never recognized them in their femininity, and never told them, “You have a nice dress today. Your hair looks good” and so on. People think compliments will make their children proud! This is not the problem! We think that education consists in correcting or preventing defects in children. Many fathers become workaholics for the sake of their children. But all that is of no use, if you as a father never see your children as unique, needing you to give birth to them in this way. God looked at his creation and He is still looking at us. We exist because He is constantly watching over us. He calls us by name. We might say that He is happy to look at us. He created us “to be holy and without blemish before Him in love.” (Eph. 1, 4) We are His joy. Our children need to feel and to know they are our joy for then they will be able to perceive something of God’s paternity and they will dare to live. There is no need for us to extravagantly demonstrate our parenthood to our child, because a look will suffice. There is a quality of being present. Children need a father and a mother and these roles are not interchangeable. Currently, many parents are raising their children alone and they must be both mother and father at the same time. Through a whole lot of love and God’s grace they can preserve the essential. Still, there is much suffering that God did not want!
Man:
CREATION OF WOMAN: A- A SUITABLE PARTNER: “So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man…”(Gen. 2, 21) In spite of the variety of the creation proposed to him, man is still very lonely. He did not find “a suitable partner.” Still, Adam has everything except for one tree in the garden. God has given him the created world as his home, and God has shared his creation power, giving him part in his own paternity. “You have made him little less than a God.” ( Ps. 8) Despite all this, man cannot live; he falls deeply asleep as if in a coma, close to death. He cannot exist since He is in the image of God and is made for love, given and received, made for a dialog of love, and he has no one to talk to and no one to love. It even seems as if God Himself could not be spoken to. It is all very mysterious. The biblical story does not quote any words from Adam. His first words will be an exclamation of love for his wife. The woman will free Adam’s word. Next, God intervenes in Adam’s sleep. “He took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.” This mysterious surgery means that all love comes from a wounded heart…and then from this rib, the Lord God builds a woman. She is not made from the ground, but neither is she of a different nature. God brings her to the man. In the original text it is said that God planted her opposite him. B- A GIFT OF GOD: We are first told that woman comes from God and that she is a gift from God. Man did not give himself woman; he failed in his attempt to find a suitable partner. Neither did woman give herself to man. God gave them to each other. Indeed, the angel will tell Joseph, “Do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home” (Mt. 2) Understanding this is fundamental for each couple. We often try to possess the other, and we take the other for granted. However, in the marriage sacrament, in France, we say, “I receive you as my spouse.” Every day we have to receive each other from the hands of God as a precious gift. Many couples would be healed if they would realize this. The blessing of the marriage sacrament is to receive the other as a gift from God who entrusts one to the other as two unique children He has chosen in His heart. C- GUARDIAN OF THE ESSENTIAL: Let us return to the creation of woman. Reading from the original text, we note that God plants Eve opposite Adam. He “plants” her, meaning she is standing straight and is not a slave, nor a servant, not even a complement to the fullness of man, but a partner, a free and equal partner, similar to him. Here she is, this suitable partner he needed in order to live. She is God’s hand, come to rescue man and allow him to live, reminding him always that neither power nor possessions will ever allow him to exist and be fulfilled. Only love can make him complete. The woman introduces Adam into God’s mystery for she is the guardian of the essential, of the desire for God that lies in every human being. We live this mission of woman in our daily life. In spiritual retreats we hear many men say, “I am here because my wife dragged me.” We have all also heard, “My wife is never happy. I worked all Saturday in my shop and she’s out of sorts.” She answers back, “I thought we could have taken time together for a walk, or time to talk or to pray together. We never have time to live. There is always work to be done!” D-“MY SISTER, MY BRIDE…” (Song of Songs 5, 1) In the presence of this woman, Adam, who had not yet pronounced one word, exclaims joyfully, “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called woman, for out of her man this one has been taken.” (Gen. 2, 23) He looks at her and recognizes her as altogether unique and alike, as his sister in humanity. Some kind of vital impetus of love pushes him toward her, but it is not yet sexual desire. They will unite later on. For the moment she is his sister, the fiancée of the Song of Songs. Discovering the other as unique and the same is the essential preliminary to becoming one flesh in conjugal love. Adam’s cry of recognition, of admiration and of joy is essential to all love. During difficult times (and these will come, for sure), it will be very important to return to this original cry of admiration and recognition of the other who came out of God’s hands. “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Biologically speaking, she is not your wife. She is your sister! You are of the same flesh, born from the same father and the same mother. We are given here a capital biblical revelation which is this: the fundamental man-woman relationship is first of all a brotherly one, distinct but implying a fundamental equality and mutual respect of each other. God puts them opposite, face-to-face, gaze-to-gaze. The orientation of woman’s genital organs shows that man and woman are made to unite face to face and not in a relationship of domination with the male above the female as in the animal world. God brought the woman face to face with man so they could look at their faces first. They are mirrors of the face of God. A physical relationship of love, to be truly human, has it roots in this fact. It serves as a language, a privileged one certainly, but only one among the numerous languages of the man-woman relationship, which is considerably richer than mere genital language. “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.” (Gen. 2, 24) These words sounds strange in the context of this time period of one thousand years before Christ! During this time, a woman was brought to her husband’s home and generally treated as an object. Men often had several wives. To require such an attachment of the man to his wife was completely contrary to the usual customs of this period, even for Israel. Of course it does not mean we have to stop all relationships with our own family because we are about to be married! Still, our family should no longer depend on us. A new household, a new family is being started. Marriage signals a new beginning and a new creation. Each couple has to invent its own story with God, to invent love, to invent life. E- MOTHER OF LIFE: “The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living”. (Gen. 3, 20) The grace of life is the deepest reality of the woman. She is consecrated to life and her name gives her identity: “Mother of all the living.” When God reveals his Name to Moses in Exodus 34, 6, He says he is MERCY, which, in Hebrew, is “rahamim.” It comes from the same root as “rehem” which means maternal womb or the instinctive and violent love in a mother’s womb for her child. (1 Kings 2, 26 Wisdom of Salomon) When God gives us his mercy, we receive more than a mere cleansing of our soul. God recreates us and we are reborn through his mercy. That is why we can say woman has such a deep complicity with God. She belongs first to God. That is what her virginity shows. Virginity in and of itself is of no use. Rather, it is a sign. Woman bears in her flesh the Name of God who is life and giver of life, she bears in her body the covenant with God for life, and she will bear in her womb a child of God. This is why everything that deals with life, including the body, sexuality, love, and children is sacred. When we seek to forget about the sacredness of life, we encounter death, as we can see in our society. Sexuality in our society has been reduced to animal instinct or only a search for pleasure, without seeking its meaning. That is why a fetus, even the smallest one, is not just a piece of flesh that you can use as you want. A fetus is already a child of God called to life. “The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.” (Isaiah 49, 1) To touch life in any way is to touch God. A great orthodox theologian named Evdokimov says that if someone wants to kill God in our world, he will first make the woman become masculine. He will give her the idea of equality with man and get her to renounce her complicity with God in bearing life. She comes to think she is inferior when in fact she has received a grace. Some will even make her feel guilty to be happy to be a mother! Is this any way to free woman? We have to go further than biological maternity. To love life, to give life and to teach man to live, to become really man, to teach him to respect life and make it grow, this is the mission and joy of each woman, married or single. John Paul II says, “Woman is strong through the consciousness of her mission. God entrusts man to her…” Our civilization is full of hatred for children, for life. TO GO EVEN FURTHER: “Woman” in Hebrew is “nekeva,” meaning “ hollow,” “receiver or container.” Even if she refuses it, her whole body demonstrates that she is made to welcome life, to console and give life. In her essence woman has a great need to be loved. She also has a spontaneous spiritual attitude that allows her to be loved. This comes easier to her than to the man because she is created to welcome. She receives and gives in return. That is why she has a special relationship to God who is love. She is spontaneously in relation with the spiritual world. Her other name in Hebrew is “ishah” (man is “ish”) Ishah:
aleph, chin, he They each have one different letter. Woman’s name is he: it represents the spiritual breath (it is twice in God’s name). So woman is predisposed to spiritual things. She will help man to enter deeper into God’s presence and will awaken his desire to know, serve and love God. Woman is naturally more religious than man. In the Jewish tradition, the woman does not have to go to the synagogue or observe the 613 commandments because she is always related to God! The letter unique to man is yod. It represents the hand, hand of man but also hand of God. That is why man is naturally oriented towards action! F- ACCEPTING THE OTHER AS HE IS: “The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.” (Gen. 2, 25) The true fruit of love is the perfect transparency of the body, the fruit of a limpidity of the heart where each admires the other’s beauty without trying to possess the other, espousing him or her instead of trying to conquer or dominate, as do the animals. To receive the other one naked means that I am going to love the other as he or she is, as God has given him or her to me. Let’s give this some thought and ask ourselves, Am I dreaming of something for my husband, my wife? For example, do I dream that my husband will be a brilliant and successful man when in fact he is shy? Will I reproach him for his shyness? Will I try during my whole life to make my husband correspond to my dreams? Or will I accept him as he is, as God is giving him to me? Will I love him just because he is who he is, with his merits and with his faults? If I cannot, then I have to ask the Lord to visit me deep in my being, where I take possession of my husband. Reproaching someone for being who he is can be destructive and totally inefficient. I must also accept being naked, poor, simple and transparent in front of my spouse. I must accept myself and let myself be loved as I am.
Woman:
Guardian of the essential, always striving for God. MAN Man’s body is turned towards the exterior WOMAN Woman’s body is turned towards the interior. She receives man inside her. She welcomes and develops life. THE BROKEN IMAGE Excerpts from Georgette Blaquiere’s book: “Oser Vivre l’Amour” Just like in any fairy tale, the story of Adam and Eve could have ended with, “and they lived happily ever after…” But Genesis is no fairy tale! It is the parable of a missed appointment between man and happiness, between man and God. So, what happened? Read GENESIS 3,1-7 Man and woman sin together Eve’s sin: The woman is tempted through her own vocation. Gen. 3, 1-5 “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.” The serpent tempts Eve through the very promises of God: to become like God. It is not Eve’s pride that makes her desire to be like God. No, we have been created for this! We are to become images of God, becoming more and more like Him. This is the fundamental vocation of man, and woman is by his side to remind him of this essential goal. Adam’s sin: he does not say anything when he was supposed to be the guardian of the law. He did not put his authority into action. He gave up. What is this fruit they ate? It is the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Why wouldn’t God allow them to have knowledge? The devil tells them God wants to keep power over them! No, God wants to give us knowledge, but measured out little by little, as we are growing into the Spirit, growing into Love.
Sin can be
summed up like this:
Eve wants to take the
promised inheritance instead of receiving it from God’s love. First consequence: “The eyes of both were opened and they realized they were naked”. This is cold lucidity. It comes from the devil and has nothing to do with truth. God is not lucid: he sees us only through love, through the real truth of what we are—his image! They are ashamed of their nakedness. Shame is the 1st Consequence.
Second
consequence:
Read Gen. 3,8-13
Third consequence.
Accusation, blame enters the world. It is one of the devil’s attributes. God cannot forgive sin when no one asks for forgiveness. He made us FREE. He does not want to impose his love. We are free to welcome it or not. Without this condition, it would not be love. His covenant remains because “his gifts and his call are irrevocable.” (Romans 11, 29) but “sin entered the world, and through sin death.” (Romans 5, 12) just like the fire that burns! Humanity will have to struggle to find fulfillment. “Your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master.” Man and woman’s vocations are distorted. The authority which has been given to Adam becomes power and domination. The “suitable help” that Adam had found in the woman will become an object of pleasure. And we can see love’s distortion. To find the path to true love, man will always have to fight against the temptation to impose himself by his strength, to dominate. Woman was made a being of desire, always striving for the essential. Desire made her open her heart and hold her hands out. The distortion of desire has become greed. Greed makes her keep and possess those she loves so tightly in her heart that she suffocates them, keeping them from living. Humanity has a long way to go to come back to the original communion. But God still loves us and his covenant remains. In his tenderness, he makes clothes for them, prefiguring the “finest robe” of the prodigal son (Luke 15, 22). And He is still calling us, saying, “My child, where are you?” We have only to answer. |
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