Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Created in the Image and Likeness of God



Today’s first reading, Gen. 1: 20-2:4a, is a continuation of the creation story.  On the 6th day of creation, “God said: ‘Let us make man [and woman] in our image, after our likeness.”  And God looked at His creation of us and “found it very good.”  Every man and every woman reflects the image of God, reveals God’s nature, God’s intelligence, God’s love and compassion for all that He created, beginning with self and others and the animal and plant kingdom as well. 

One of the most expressive images of the Triune God occurs in marriage when a man and a woman  join together to become one flesh.  God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are one God in three divine persons. A married couple become one in love and out of that love create a third person, the child who takes on the nature of the father and the mother in its mother’s womb.   A husband and a wife strive to give themselves totally to one another in much the same way as the Father gives Himself totally to the Son, the Son gives Himself totally to the Father, and their complete love for one another is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Blessed Trinity. 

O God, may  all of us, married and/or single, imitate you in totally giving of ourselves for the sake of the other. May the love we have for you, the Triune God, bring to fruition in us the self-giving, self-sacrificing, self-effacing love that makes new life a reality all around us.

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