Genesis: Key to the Dogma

Out of all the trees in the garden, God knows one is not good for the man. That is because He didn't create this tree. It only came to be through the misuse of creaturely freedom, when Satan led a hosts of angels into sinful rebellion. So God lovingly warns the man not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of God and evil. "Why not, Father?" Adam asks. And God points to the woman in the garden with Adam, "Because it is not good for you to be alone. By nature you are a social creature. You need interpersonal relationships to be truly happy. But this tree will try to tell you just the opposite, that you can be happy living only for yourself." Adam somehow forgets what his Heavenly Father has told him. Instead, he listens to the Serpent and sins.

But the Heavenly Father does not forget his adopted son. He sees now what a pitiable state Adam, and all mankind with him, has fallen into. He is like a man on a journey who has been beset by robbers: stripped, beaten, and left half dead (see Lk 10:29 f). So God, moved by compassion, promises to redeem mankind. He will pay the debt Adam owes, and if there is any more "expenses," that is, if we add our personal sins to Adam's, He will pay that, too. So in the fullness of time, God sends His Son into the world. In the Incarnation, God's fatherhood is finally perfectly honored. Every act of the God-man infinitely pleases the Father, because it is the work of His Eternal Word, and hence, "speaks" of God's goodness, truthfulness and love. The first part of the debt is paid, but the is work is not yet consummated.

So the Son, for His part, moved with infinite love for His Father and for mankind, offers Himself as a holocaust upon the Tree of the Cross, making it a perfect "Tree of Life." Though it may look like a man is making a bloody sacrifice to God, it is really God who is sacrificing Himself for man, pouring out every drop of His Sacred Humanity to restore us to friendship with our Heavenly Father: "A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends" (Jn 15:13). He, the Uncreated Image, forgives us in the name of His Father, thus extending to us the created image of grace. It is a spiritual fatherhood, but one "out-formed" through the gift of the body: a sacrament. And our Heavenly Father rejoices that His adopted son has been raised to a supernatural life again, and so is "like" God again. He says, "Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet ... we are going to have a feast, a celebration" (Lk 15:22-24). We are now clothed with the best robe: the grace of Christ. The wedding ring of the new and everlasting covenant gives us the power to unite all our sacrifices to Christ's one perfect sacrifice, so they have value or merit. Our feet are now consecrated to the task of preaching the Gospel, we become bearers of the Word. It looks like the debt is fully paid, as the wedding feast is celebrated anew at each and every Mass, but one person is still missing from the scene.

How can a wedding be consummated without a Bride? How can a human family be formed without a Mother? Had not God solemnly declared to Adam, and to all of us in Adam, "It is not good for man to be alone"? How could God now change His mind and say that a Woman should have no share in the redemption? How could He now go back on His Word?

Remember: Adam and Eve had been created for a supernatural end, for a communion with God. Their sin consisted in preferring to live in a natural love relationship rather than a supernatural one. This could be attractive to them because they were still in a state of holiness. They were both so very good, beautiful and loveable. So swallowing the Serpent's lies, they set about redefining their marriage. It was not about being fruitful, having children, but about just the two of them, being all alone to enjoy themselves in an earthly paradise. This is not so farfetched, it happens all the time in our contraceptive world. But sooner or later, such selfishness degenerates further. Pope Paul VI saw this when he issued Humanae Vitae. The couple's right to be the masters of when and how many children to have degenerates into a woman's right to her body. The couple's choice to be sterile degenerates into a woman's choice to have an abortion. Divorce follows. What's the point of a marriage if it remains barren by choice? And if marriage is only about the pleasure it brings, or a convenient economical way of paying one's bills, why can't it be between two men or two women? And if marriage is not really about a personal gift of self to the other expressed through the body, why not "create" babies in a test tube? And while we're at it, why not go all the way, and claim the right to an unlimited freedom to create and destroy life through embryonic stem cell research and cloning? Talk about a master-slave relationship! The very "un-making" of man!

In the light of today's culture of death, God's words to Adam, and hence to all of us, take on a profound significance, "It is not good for the man to be alone." The words of the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes, also comes to mind:

... man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself ... the beginning, the subject and the goal of all social institutions is and must be the human person, which for its part and by its very nature stands completely in need of social life (#24-25).

And here we find the key to a fifth Marian Dogma: Jesus did not need Mary in so much as He was God. But Jesus did need Mary in so much as He was truly human. As a man, by nature, He stood "completely in need of a social life." As the New Adam, this social life obviously took the form of a Woman, a New Eve, who would be "one flesh" with Him, with the same graced human nature. To be deprived of this gift of the "Woman," would mean a privation of His human nature. And this means, in turn, that He would have saved us only by sheer will power, as God, and not as a God-man. Which means He would not really have redeemed us at all. We would still be ensnared in a master-slave relationship: "Lord, why are we saved?" "Because I say so!"

So a fifth Marian Dogma flows out of both Jesus' true masculinity and His essential holiness. He is the perfect "man," with a perfect human nature. If this were not so, He could not redeem us. Hence, by necessity of nature. He stands in relation to another "man" as a male-female duality. And she, too, is the perfect "man," but as "Woman." She, too, is full of grace, though not essentially, but accidentally. So she is less in dignity in terms of her person, which is created, but equal in dignity in terms of her sexuality, for her femininity is brought to absolute perfection through the grace of Christ.

Whew! All this long meditation on the Book of Genesis to obtain this one little nugget of truth! But as I said above, I believe it is the "key" to the Dogma. For once this simple truth is grasped, it changes our whole focus. Since "man," by nature, is a male-female duality, and since Jesus came to save "man," then it is only reasonable to expect there will be a New Eve. Her role as Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate becomes a given. So we can leave behind such questions as, "Why is Mary Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate when only Jesus can save us?" "The 'sensum fidei' tells us the Dogma has to be true, but yet, how can we prove it without taking away from Jesus, the one mediator?" "Isn't a fifth Marian Dogma superfluous, I mean, what good would it do?" And we can seek to answer this question instead, "How do Mary's feminine functions-Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate-complement Jesus' work and so bring all that He does to completion, to the fruitfulness God desires to see in man?" In other words, we can never know "why," because the answer is beyond us, in God's unlimited freedom. But we can at least see how fitting it that God should do things these way, and this gives us the assurance that it is, indeed, a work done with complete freedom and not by any inner "necessity," some strange force within God, driving Him to act this way: "I had better save these guys, or I won't look good!" All of this has tremendous implications for Sacramental theology, but to get back to our reading of the redemption through the lens of the covenant:

A New Eve, or appropriate Bride for the Divine Bridegroom, was going to be hard to find. Maybe the Serpent, incorrigible as ever, even laughed when God sternly laid down the law after the Fall. "A woman without sin is going to be found after this mess I made? Ha, ha, ha, that's a good one! I've got the whole world eating out of my hand, right here, under my little thumb. All mankind has fallen under my 'fatherly protection,' and I'm not going to let any one of those miserable slaves escape!"

But God, with a stroke of creative genius, already knew who the Bride was going to be. And since He was God, He had the power to bring her into "act." Otherwise, He would never have committed Himself to the promise of Genesis 3:15, or for the creation of us in the first place. Why have a "marriage" between God and man, if the marriage will end up barren by choice?

So the New Eve is the link between the first creation and the new creation in Christ. Through the devil's envy, the first tree of life becomes supplanted by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But this barren "fig tree" is cursed by God (see Matthew 21:19 and Genesis 2:14, where the Serpent is cursed), and is therefore destined to be uprooted and crushed by the perfect Tree of Life, the wood of the Cross. The first creation is not negated, but taken up into a far more perfect covenant, the new and everlasting covenant made in the Blood of the Lamb. In anticipation of this perfect Sacrifice, in view of the infinite merits of Jesus Christ it represents, a Woman is redeemed ahead of everyone else. And it all makes so much sense!

So the New Eve is a descendant of Adam, though one "not conceived with original sin." She is in a unique position, therefore, from the rest of us: released from Satan's bondage ahead of time, she is able to act as a free agent and merit at the hour of the redemption. So she uniquely contributes to the salvation of the world, with and under her Son, as a secondary positive influence upon the whole human race. In this she is akin to Moses, the great liberator of God's people at the first exodus. That is, just as Moses was carried through the waters ahead of his people's crossing of the Red Sea, as an infant, on a special "ark" (the papyrus basket); a flesh and blood Israelite, yet escaping the slavery and death his people knew at Pharaoh's hands; growing up a free man, a prince at court, and so used by God to liberate His people at the proper time- so Mary was saved ahead of everyone else, on a special "ark" (her Immaculate Conception); so she escaped the slavery to Satan and the sentence of death due to original sin; so she was truly one of us, a daughter of Adam, yet a free woman (Gal 4:26), and so used by God as the New Eve, at the foot of the Cross, the Passover event "par excellence."

Furthermore, the New Eve is inseparably one flesh with the redeemer, by a bond of nature (mother-son) and not through sexual intercourse; through God's power, and not from "the urge of the flesh or will of man" (Jn 1:13). And just as Eve recognized and accepted her relationship to Adam-"this one is to be called woman, for this one was taken from man" (Gen 2:23)-so the New Eve recognizes and accepts her relationship to the New Adam: "Rejoice so highly favored! [full of grace] ... Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus" (Lk 1:28, 31) ... I am the handmaid of the Lord ... let what you have said be done in me" (Lk 1:38). Through this inseparable bond of nature, the new male-female duality, she becomes the Ark of the Covenant. So when Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit cries out: "Of all woman you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Lk 1:42), the Holy Spirit is repeating the blessing of Genesis 1:28: "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it"-

The question becomes, "Will the New Adam and the New Eve consummate the covenant so that humanity can enter into the blessing of the Sabbath rest?"

We know the answer to that one: on the night before He dies (that is the "evening" of the "sixth day," Jesus institutes the Eucharist, and on the "morning" of that "sixth day," Friday, He consummates the Sacrifice. Just as Adam gave Eve a new name after the Fall-"Eve because she was the mother of all those who live" (Gen 3:20)-so the New Adam gives the New Eve a new name after the Fall has been overcome: "Woman, this is your son ... This is your mother" (Jn 19:26).

The body of Jesus is taken down before sunset; they hurry to do it. On Friday night, the "evening" of the "seventh" day, the New Adam enters into the Sabbath rest, apparently as a defeated warrior. He sleeps in death. The New Eve, ever one with Jesus, enters the tomb with Him. For her, though, it is a spiritual death. All that is earthly has been slain in her, as her Immaculate Heart is pierced with an incredible sorrow (Lk 2:35). It is a sorrow she freely accepts as the Advocate, or Loving Mother, of mankind. She repeats over and over, as her only consolation and hope: "They have no wine" (Jn 2:3). How can there be a wedding without wine? How can there be a joyful reunion between God and man without the "wine," or Blood of Christ? She knows He had to make this gift of Himself, and for it to be completely perfect, she has to now add the gift of herself, that the cup may be filled to the brim and overflowing with life. But still, it is a "death," for Jesus is her life, her one and only virginal love. The "morning" of the "seventh" stretches out endlessly long. God rests. The old covenant, the first covenant of creation, also has to "die," so that with it may be buried all our human sins, the horrible fruit from the Serpent's tree.

So it is "very early on the first day of the week and still dark" (Jn 20:1), on the "evening" of the "eighth" day, or the "first" day of the new creation, that Jesus rises from the dead. The Bridegroom no longer sleeps, and all creation rises with Him. The joyful reunion begins, as Bridegroom and Bride embrace:

I come to my garden,
my sister, my promised bride,
I gather my myrrh and balsam,
I eat my honey and my honeycomb,
I drink my wine and my milk.
Eat, friends, and drink.
drink deep, my dearest friends ...
Come, my Beloved,
let us go into the fields.
We will spend the night in the villages,
and in the morning we will go to the vineyards.
We will see if the vines are budding,
if their blossoms are opening,
if the pomegranate trees are in flower.
Then I shall give you
the gift of my love (Song 5:1 and 7:12-13).

Here it is necessary to stop. But the point, has been made: to read the redemption through the lens of the covenant opens one up to the great mystery of all God has done for us in Christ. It is not to make less of the redemption, but to stand in awe before the wonder of it all, even if some of our human questions, our "why's," are not answered.

The first Adam ran away from his masculine responsibilities. The New Adam ran manfully to embrace them: "For the sake of the joy which was still in the future, he endured the cross, disregarding the shamefulness of it" (Heb 12:2). What merit is there, anyway, in suffering for the sake of suffering? But if you are laying down your life for your intimate friend, one who is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, ah! that is the greatest love, and only such charity-love merits in God's eyes. Mary's role as Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate, then, takes nothing away from Jesus, but only demonstrates more fully what a real man He was (and still is!).