HOMILY AT THE THANKSGIVING MASS ON 4TH OCTOBER 2015 (27th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Brothers and sisters in Christ, on this 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, both the First Reading and the Gospel invite us to reflect on the indissolubility of marriage.
We all know that this is one of the thorny issues in contemporary society. We are all witnesses to the high rate of divorce in our society today. As Christians, we uphold the dignity and sacredness of the union between man and woman. We defend the right of every child to a family that reflects the biblical teachings that we heard today in the First Reading and the Gospel.
The First Reading narrates one of the two stories in the Book of Genesis about the creation of the human race with two distinct sexes – male and female. As is the case with most of the didactical stories in the Book of Genesis, the story is in response to a question which we actually find at the end of the reading. The author of the Book of Genesis sought to respond to the question “why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body”. The author of the Book of Genesis seeks to answer this question by pointing to the creation of the human person by God. This particular creation story, which is different from the one we find in Gen 1,26-28, gives the impression that the creation of woman was an afterthought or a reconsideration of the divine plan. God initially created only man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it. Observing the condition of the man, God realized that it was not good for man to be alone. It is the first time in the Bible we read that God thought there was something wrong with what he had created.
Until now, we read about how God saw that what he created was good, even very good with the creation of man. We need to ask ourselves at this point in the story why God decided to reconsider his plan of creation if he found the creation of man to be very good. Why did the Book of Genesis introduce an imperfection
which will be the avenue to create further? The story we heard today needs careful reading in order to unveil the theology of the writer and what God wants to teach us about the union between man and woman, in fact about family life.
We need to take note of the reason God gave for the creation of the woman in the story today. God said: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” If God had found man to be an adequate partner for man, I think there would have been no need to create a helper for man; a helper who is different from man. If this is the plan of God, the all-knowing, why should some of us think we know better than God and advocate other forms of companionship?
In the reading today, it is clear that woman was not created for the sake of identity as we find in the first creation story in Gen 1,27. In the first creation story, the emphasis was on the image and likeness of God. In the second creation story, the one we heard in the First Reading, God created woman so that she may be a helper, a companion to man.
