The First reading at Mass today introduces a theme- this week the theme of marriage. As usual, that ‘theme’ is taken up and developed/explored in the the responsorial psalm and the Gospel reading.
The Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helpmate.’ So from the soil the Lord God fashioned all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them; each one was to bear the name the man would give it. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild beasts. But no helpmate suitable for man was found for him. So the Lord God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. The Lord God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man. The man exclaimed:
‘This at last is bone from my bones,
and flesh from my flesh!
This is to be called woman,
for this was taken from man.’This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body.
Genesis 2:18-24
Some might suggest that God, in addressing man’s existential problem that he cannot be alone and has not yet learnt how to be in full communion with God, causes another! How does man live with (wo)man?!
Yet the potential for wholeness is what God creates and men and women are set on the track to learn that wholeness and holiness. In the life-long union of marriage come some of the greatest tests to maturity and the greatest helps to it. We see that in the story of Adam and Eve. We see that in our own lives, married or not.
- Pray for the Synod on the vocation and mission of the Family, beginning this weekend in Rome.
- Pray for married couples
- Pray for all parents and their families
- Pray for yourself and your relationships.
Shrine of Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin, the parents of St Therese of Lisieux, who are to be canonised during the current Synod in Rome on the Family and its Vocation
Living Eucharist 