Women: Meditations - Part Two

God decreed that it is not good for the man, Adam, to be alone. So God brought to Adam, all the animals and birds, and whatever name Adam gave - that is its name. But there was found among the animals and birds, no fit helper for Adam, - no one like unto himself. How much time or how many days passed between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve? Can we make any assumption based on the fact that Eve should possibly have been included in the keeping of the First Sabbath Day of Rest and Worship? The Fathers agree that Eve was created in the garden where Adam had been placed, for Adam was created outside the Garden. The Fathers also agree that the First Sabbath Day was Saturday and that Adam was created on Friday; so that Creation, or Day One, was Sunday.

Of course these names are not the original ones. It is obvious that our present names for the days of the week are taken from the pagan mythologies. And these myths, as recounted at length elsewhere, are corruptions of the original, primordial revelation given to Adam and his sons. I believe that we must leave these questions of what I have studied elsewhere as "Adam's First Day" to those scholars deeply learned in Hebrew. For there may be some clues hidden in the original, or more near to the original manuscripts. My focus in this study is the role of women, insofar as it can be defined from Genesis and subsequent history.

 

We return to Adam - before the creation of Eve. He was a prototype of Our Lord Jesus Christ in His perfect - and magnificently Perfect Human Nature. Artists should have this in mind, when they depict Our Divine Lord, especially in His Passion and Death on the Cross. But Adam was not intended by God to remain in this state of Perfect Human Nature, insofar as the feminine principle was concerned. In order to image forth the Blessed Trinity in corporeal, incarnated form, there had to be a corporeal personification of the Holy Ghost and God the Father.

God the Father was and is represented by Adam, the Head of the whole human race and of every member in it. God the Son, is He Who became Incarnate - and God the Holy Ghost is the feminine principle in God and in Adam. But taken out of Adam to make the first Eve, He is also personified in the Holy Family by the Immaculate ever-Virgin Mary - and in every human family - by the wife and mother. The Order of Generation thus has this one unique insertion into its processes - to be forever held up and above all human generation. For the Incarnation of the Word of the Father, Creator of all things - visible and invisible - took place in a miraculous manner - absolutely outside of and above the ordinary manner of human generation. And at the same time, within that Order to ensure the legitimate genealogy of the children of Adam and of King David. For David was the legitimate heir of Adam's royalty - by which he held dominion - prefiguring Christ's Kingship over all nations and empires. For He alone is True God and True Man.

 

His perfectly integral human nature subsumed into the One Divine Nature of the One Person of the Son - but with no admixture of Natures = 2 Natures - perfectly human and perfectly - infinitely Divine - under the perfect control of the one Divine Person of the Word. Oh marvelous and ever adorable mystery of the Incarnation! This ever ineffably adorable mystery includes the redemption from Adam's Sin. Now we enter the period or interval of time, which ends that of the state of Original Justice and Innocence, and begins that of the State of Fallen Nature. And this is where we still are. Eve was deceived by Lucifer/Satan. She believed the malicious tempter's lies about the effects of eating that very alluring fruit - so beautiful to behold - how could it possibly be evil, Eve thought to herself! And to be like God who is all knowing! And so is Adam! To be like Adam and no longer subject to him. To be like the Man-Adam and no longer serve him - but to be a head and rule as he does! That is what the modern woman desires. And she too, is deceived by Satan's lies. But Adam was not deceived. Now lacking the feminine principle embodied in Eve, he could not bear to be separated from her in her sin. Better to be separated from God! And so the man was seduced. And Adam consented to the evil desires of the woman Eve. Even so does the effeminate man of today allow the wayward women to pursue their evil desires and fails to rebuke them as he should, for their own good. And so the woman of today must be presented with the true theology of femininity, - a true Mariology. She must be shown how to be a true handmaid of the Lord.

Keeping in mind that only in the Most Blessed Trinity is there absolute equality amongst the Three Divine Persons, and that the principle of hierarchy is of the essential nature of the form of all corporeal being and even of the Angels, we can and must say that the very structure of human nature is also, therefore, hierarchical! Therefore the feminine principle is, of necessity, one in subordination to the masculine one. And is this not precisely what Our Blessed Lady instinctively recognized when she replied to the Angel Gabriel, "Behold the Handmaid of the Lord"?

In Genesis One when God says "Let Us make man to Our Image and Likeness....Male and female He created them". (Genesis 1:26-27), God is summing up in a brief statement what is given us in greater and to us more important and interesting detail in Genesis 2. But why did God create a helper for Adam given the fact that Adam, to all appearances, felt no need at all for such a companion-helper? Well, we could say that God just knew better, especially when He said that it was not good for man to be alone. Everyone, today especially, would quickly agree that God was simply pointing out something obvious! But I submit that there is a deeper reason, if we may speak of human reasons in God. Recall that in the Divine Mind all is present. It is an eternal now. It is certainly too facile to say that God foresaw the real necessity of a female body for the reproduction of the human species. But it is not, perhaps, too easy to note that God certainly foresaw the Fall of Adam and the subsequent need for redemption. In which case, there would, of necessity, need to be a second Adam and a Second Eve.