Friday, February 20, 2009

Heb 2, 5-8 What is man that you are mindful of him?

(Heb 2, 5-8) What is man that you are mindful of him?
[5] For it was not to angels that he subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. [6] Instead, someone has testified somewhere: "What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? [7] You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor, [8] subjecting all things under his feet." In "subjecting" all things (to him), he left nothing not "subject to him." Yet at present we do not see "all things subject to him,"
(CCC 343) Man is the summit of the Creator's work, as the inspired account expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other creatures (Cf. Gen 1-26). (CCC 382) "Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity" (GS 14 § 1). The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God. (CCC 383) "God did not create man a solitary being. From the beginning, "male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27). This partnership of man and woman constitutes the first form of communion between persons" (GS 12 § 4). (CCC 384) Revelation makes known to us the state of original holiness and justice of man and woman before sin: from their friendship with God flowed the happiness of their existence in paradise. (CCC 374) The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ. (CCC 375) The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, adam and Eve, were constituted in an original "state of holiness and justice" (Cf. Council of Trent (1546): DS 1511). This grace of original holiness was "to share in… divine life" (Cf. LG 2). (CCC 377) The "mastery" over the world that God offered man from the beginning was realized above all within man himself: mastery of self. The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence (Cf. I Jn 2:16) that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason. (CCC 378) The sign of man's familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden (Cf. Gen 2:8). There he lives "to till it and keep it". Work is not yet a burden (Gen 2:15; cf. 3:17-19), but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation. (CCC 379) This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God's plan, will be lost by the sin of our first parents.

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