54 THE SIGNS OF THE MYSTERY Long before he was called to the See of Peter, Joseph Ratzinger presented Mary and Mariology as the guarantee of the dignity and freedom of man created in the image of God. In the context of negative theological and anthropological changes of the collapsing Western culture of a formerly Christian Europe, he wrote, Mary is the believing other whom God calls. As such, she represents the creation, which is called to respond to God, and the freedom of the creature, which does not lose its integrity in love but attains completion therein. Mary thus represents saved and liberated man, but she does so precisely as a woman, that is, in firm, stiff. In the Holy Scripture and the Hebrew Bible, it means male. In relation to animals, e.g. in sacrifices, it means a male. Note that the explicitness is strong. But in unekebah, the explicitness is also strong because nekebah comes from the verb nakab, which in Polish means to perforate. Therefore nekebah in Hebrew means female, womanly. In relation to animals, it is translated as a female. ... Please note how difficult it is for translators. How to translate into Polish language zachar unekebah bara otam? We translate it as ‘man and woman He created them.’ ... But to a Hebrew ear, it is much more literal. What does it evoke? It evokes, first of all, sexuality. It indicates sex. Man has been created as male and female, as a man and a woman. Sexuality — we know it well — is intrinsically linked with physicality. We recognise a gender from the physical appearance, even without any hints. Note there is an emphasis on sexuality, and there is an emphasis on physicality. God created man male and female. And both sexes are two ways of being human beings. None of them is better or worse. But let’s go back to this idea which is the destination point of our reflection. ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves. … God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.’ Therefore, since we sense this richness of God’s inner life, it is reflected in sex diversity in man. What links both sexes? What attracts them to each other? What makes one sex need the other? Love! This diversity is fulfilled in love. So human love, love of man, love of a man and a woman represents what makes God’s inner life so rich. Further on, we will learn from the pages of the New Testament that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and that what bonds the Divine Persons is Love. But at the very basis of creation, in God’s plan of creating a man and a woman, there is a reproduction of who God is. But not only that. Note that since sex is inextricably linked to corporeality, we have a certain paradox. The image of the invisible God, the image of God who is an absolute spirit, is man with their physicality and materiality reflected in sexuality. Human corporeality, the corporeality of man, is, in a way, representative of what is Divine and who God is. If any of you remember old religion and catechism classes, there was a question: ‘What is the image of God in a man?’ And we were supposed to answer: ‘The image of God in man is mind and free will.’ And therefore, the image of God in man — as suggested in this catechism — is man’s spiritual faculties. But when we consider this text from the Book of Genesis, we realize that the image of God in man, apart from spiritual faculties, or rather alongside spiritual faculties, is also man’s corporeality intrinsically connected with sexuality. ... Therefore, in the creation of man and in the fact that man is the image of God, there is a possibility, a feeling, an intuition, a possibility that God may be able to become a man. The incarnation of the Son of God and the fact that God has become a man for us and our salvation have their foretaste, their earliest origin in creation itself. When we ask, like they used to ask in the Middle Ages: Cur Deus homo? — ‘Why has God become a man?’ the answer is: ‘Because in the very act of creation, in the very act of being a man, there was such a great value included in corporeality and sexuality that it paved the way to the incarnation of the Son of God.’” Chrostowski, Wcielenie a Księga Rodzaju [The Incarnation and the Book of Genesis], p. 727–729).
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