Christ is the one who leads, guides, and strengthens. He gives gifts, the Church gives thanks. He gives us Himself in Eucharist, and the Church responds by giving herself in that same Eucharist. This basic pattern runs into the wiring of the human relation to creation. God formed Adam from the ground- in relation to God, Adam is feminine. He has received from God the Breath of Life and owes each succeeding breath to divine grace. We see the gendered polarity that gives rise to Adam in Genesis 2:4:
“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” (Genesis 2:4, ESV)
This formula recurs eleven times in the Book of Genesis, and in each other case the phrase refers to a genealogical relation. Heaven and earth stand in genealogical relation to Adam. The Spirit of Life enters into the dust of the ground and brings forth Adam as the son of God and creation- as the Church Fathers knew, Adam is a microcosm- he unites spiritual and corporeal realities in his body. St. Luke therefore traced the genealogy of Jesus to Adam, who is identified, in turn, as “the son of God” (Luke 3:38). Yet Adam, taken from the ground, is then given a masculine commission. He is to “guard and cultivate” that garden which God brought forth by His power (Genesis 2:8-9, 2:15).
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