A New Creation

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;

the old has gone, the new has come

(II Cor. 5:17)

So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took part of the man's side and closed up the place with flesh.  Then the Lord God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said,

"This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called 'woman'

for she was taken out of man."

For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become [a new creation--a new species].

St. Paul says that marriage is a great mystery, for it illustrates the union of Christ with the Church.  It has always interested me that Scripture says that "a man" will leave his father and mother, even though culturally for centuries, it was the woman who left her parents and moved into the groom's estate.  Realistically, however, if we analyze what really happens, at least in our own culture, the man does leave his father and mother and adopt the wife's family as his own.  The woman never really leaves her father and mother unless there is a problem in the family dynamics. 

The unit that is created by a marriage is indeed a "new creation."  It is not the marriage of either previous family, but its own "species," so to speak, with its own dynamics, customs, perspectives, and ways of doing things.

God, wanting to become part of our family of mankind, and to share intimately in its dynamics, customs, perspectives, and ways of doing things, allowed His Son to leave 'father and mother' and unite himself with humankind, becoming a "new species, a new creation"---unlike anything that had ever gone before. 

God allowed Jesus to 'fall into a deep sleep' on the cross, so that out of His side, He could fashion the church---bone of his bone; flesh of his flesh.  We are no longer bound by the viewpoints and customs of the past; we are a new creation.

He shall be called Emmanuel---God with us.  At the Last Supper, Jesus prayed that we might all be one as the Father and He are one.  Since we are united in and with Christ in a new marriage creation, we are all also united with one another and with the Father.  God is living with us, in our daily lives:  in the boredom and routine; in the fears and anxieties; in the excitement of new beginnings.  He is here, because we are "one flesh" with us, and He is eternally faithful to His own flesh.  The Man has adopted the wife's family as His own.