"It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a suitable partner for him."
This isn't always obviously true to us. Sometimes, when other people seem to challenge us, or when our interactions with them strain us to the breaking point, we might imagine that we'd be happier to revisit the list of potential partners God paraded before Adam and call back a cat or a dog. With a pet instead of a partner we could live a life that was much less challenging, yet with some of the superficial rewards of affection.
The man gave names to all the cattle,
all the birds of the air, and all wild animals;
but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.
By coming being such close approximations of a good partner our most beloved pets can reveal the still greater difference of what true life in relationship is meant to mean.
The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib
that he had taken from the man.
We can be fulfilled only by being in relationship with other rational creatures who exist for their own sakes. This is of course also why they can be so challenging at times. They exist, not for our own happiness, but for their own, which they must find, not ultimately in us, but in God. Yet it is only when two creatures with this completely realized individuality come together that they experience a satisfactory antidote to loneliness.
When he brought her to the man, the man said:
"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."
Humans complete one another precisely because of the equal dignity before God that each one possesses. When we most truly come together it is not a mere matter of convenience or emotion, but a choice to pursue together the end for which we were created. No man or woman can ever provide for us what we are meant to find in God alone. Yet we are meant to seek that fulfillment in God together, by choosing to unite with one another. The reason this is so important is precisely because we, as men and women, are uniquely created in the image and likeness of God. It is on this basis that our love for one another can even transcend itself. We can learn to love, not only the image, but also at the same time the One whose image it is.
So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together,
no human being must separate.
The persons of the Holy Trinity are caught up in an eternal exchange of love. Our own love for one another is meant to be an earthly image of this heavenly permanence. Yet we realize that this is not easy or natural to fallen men and women. We tend to be inconsistent, to let our feelings get the better of us, and let the hardness of our hearts dictate the terms of our relationships.
Because of the hardness of your hearts
he wrote you this commandment.
On our own, the hardness of our hearts does tend to dominate our decisions and cause us to be less than we are meant to be. It is only as we respond to the invitation to let our relationships participate in the life of the Trinity itself, the life which we receive through the Sacraments, that we able to overcome the hardness of our hearts. The promise, indeed, was that we would be given new hearts (see Ezekiel 36:26) . Still, we must make a continual choice to live from that new reality rather than backsliding to what we were before.
What does it look like to have a new heart? It looks very much like being born again, becoming a child again in the best sense.
Amen, I say to you,
whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child
will not enter it.
Strangely, children are often more able to enter into relationships than adults. They have less of the baggage and brokenness that keeps we adults focused on ourselves. Let that image be for us a hint of what God wants to make possible in us, a hint of the promised new heart which we have not yet fully realized as an experiential reality. We too can be as self-forgetful as children are at their best. We too can remember how boring and tedious it can be when our friends are unavailable and we are left on our own. We too can embrace thriving together in relationship.
It is by love for one another that this world becomes livable in a fully human way. We learn from Jesus who first and perfectly demonstrated self-forgetful love when he endured the cross for us.
For it was fitting that he,
for whom and through whom all things exist,
in bringing many children to glory,
should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.
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