When the Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce, he did not answer with a rule. He pointed them back to the beginning: “from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). Saint John Paul II took that answer seriously. If we want to understand marriage and the body, he said, we have to go back to the first chapters of Genesis and look at the original experiences of the first man and woman. He named three of them.
Original solitude
In Genesis 2, before the woman is created, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). The man names the animals and discovers that none of them is like him. John Paul II saw two layers in this solitude.
- Being a person. The man realizes he is different from the rest of creation. He can know, choose and relate to God. He is a someone, not a something.
- Being incomplete. At the same time he realizes he is made for relationship. No creature in the garden can answer his longing for another like himself.
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Sources
- Genesis 2:18-25 The creation of man and woman
- CCC 1604-1605 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Marriage in the order of creation
- CCC 1609 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Marriage under the regime of sin
- CCC 2335 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Male and female he created them
- TOB 1979-1984, Man and Woman He Created Them John Paul II, General Audiences on the beginning