A Reflection for Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
The Lord God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” 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 to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.
So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. 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.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh. (Gn 2:18-24)
I had a professor once who said the point of preaching was, first and foremost, to spread good news—the root source of the word “evangelization.” The Bible, he said, isn’t meant to be broken open so that people might be discouraged or insulted or disillusioned.
That’s easier said than done on some days. Consider today’s first reading, where God decides the first man is lonely (after the animals prove unsuitable partners for him) and so creates woman…out of the man’s rib. Not to your taste? How about the Gospel, where Jesus appears to insult a Syro-Phoenician mother who has come to him for help? Eeep. Are today’s readings meant actually to see just how jesuitical a writer must be to find good news in all that?
Luckily, there’s “Jurassic Park.”
Why’s this? Well, in the original “Jurassic Park” movie, there’s a scene where Dr. Henry Wu explains how the masterminds of the dinosaur theme park could make sure the creatures couldn’t breed: All the animals were female. “All vertebrate embryos are inherently female anyway,” he tells his visitors. “They just require an extra hormone given at the right developmental stage to make them male.”
Now, this isn’t exactly true, non-movie scientists will tell you: An embryo’s biological sex is determined at fertilization. Whatever, it’s a movie—and it doesn’t end well for Dr. Wu and friends in any case. But it is true that for the first six weeks or so of life, embryos are undifferentiated—it’s not until the Y chromosome in some mammals triggers an increase of testosterone that such embryos develop into biological males. And we’re no different from other vertebrates—“all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals”—in this regard.
In other words, God forms men out of women.
But isn’t this an inversion of the Genesis story? A contradiction of the Bible? Or is it a case where the text points us to a deeper allegorical meaning about our own existence, our own place in God’s creation? Remember Pope Benedict XVI’s reflection on the Bible’s creation narratives in February 2013, in the final moments of his papacy: “The Bible does not intend to be a natural science manual,” he said. “Rather, it wishes to make the authentic and profound truth of things understood.”
And there is indeed authentic and profound truth to be found in today’s reading. We are not stronger, more virtuous, more deserving of God’s gifts based on our differences, but because of our shared humanity, our common formation by God’s will from the dust. Here is Pope Benedict again, on Feb. 6. 2013: “We come from the good earth through the work of the good Creator. In addition there is another fundamental reality: all human beings are dust, over and above the distinctions made by culture and by history, over and above every social difference; we are one humanity modelled with God’s one earth.”
Genesis had it right. God’s creation allows each of us to say of another, truthfully: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”
