In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes the philosopher stands up to make his speech on the nature of love, to explain why lovers experience completeness when they meet their beloved. Aristophanes explains that in the beginning, Zeus created an androgynous being, something like a man and a woman joined at the back forming a single being.
In its plenitude and happiness, the Androgyny grew insolent and refused to honor and venerate the gods, and even tried to attack them in their dwelling place in the mountains. Zeus, a little envious of its happiness and also out of revenge, punished the Androgyny by dividing it into two, following the old idea of “divide et impera” or divide and conquer. Hence the origin of the word “sex”, which has its root in “section”, “sect”, or a part of the whole.
According to Aristophanes, we spend our lives looking for the part that was amputated because without it life has no meaning, and is depressing and dull. With it, we feel complete, we return to fullness and perfection. Love is therefore the force that causes the man and the woman to gravitate toward each other until they meet and fuse into the single being they once were.
Love is what is felt when we find the amputated part, and affectively and effectively establish the primordial union. In Portuguese, people speak of their husband or wife as the other half of their face or the other half of the orange.
It is said that Aristophanes is the father of romantic love and also of platonic love, the type of love where the lovers gravitate around one another without ever merging into one, as would be in their conscious or unconscious desire.
The biblical myth of creation of man and woman
“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:26-27
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” (…) So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. Genesis 2:18, 21-24
The Jews arranged two mythological accounts to explain what the Greeks explained in one: first, that the man and the woman are equal in their dignity, they are two versions of the same human being, and neither of these versions is superior or inferior to the other, and second, that at the core they are one, that they were once one, and now they try to be one.
We tend to think that in the beginning God created the man and took the woman out of him, but this is not what the Bible says. God, in the beginning, made the human being, the Man with capital letter, which in Greek is Anthropos and in Latin Homo. From this human being, God took the woman and what was left was: Vis virus, which in Portuguese gives “man”, the true word that designates a male human being.
When speaking of marriage, it is interesting to note that Jesus, almost like the Greeks, quotes the first and not the second creation account in saying: from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female (Mark 10:6), because he was more interested in the equality between man and woman which is something that did not exist during his time nor in the centuries that followed until now.
Jesus then proceeds to the second part of the second creation account in the book of Genesis to solidify what marriage means: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” (Mark 10: 7-8)
Greece invented the romantic love and our tendency to seek out our other half, the perfect love, the perfect man, the perfect woman, the soul mate, and Israel invented the marriage institution and the marriage arranged by families, without love between the individuals, with the sole purpose of procreation and of establishing alliances between the peoples in order to avoid wars.
When one equals three
The boyfriend knocked at his girlfriend’s door. “Who is it?” asked the girlfriend from behind the door. “It is I”, said the boyfriend. “Go away, in this house we cannot fit you and I.” The rejected boyfriend wandered into the desert, meditating for months, considering and reconsidering the words of his beloved. At last, he returned and knocked at the door again. “Who is it?” “It is you,” the boyfriend replied this time. And the door immediately opened wide.
This God who is a community of love created man in his own image and likeness, so that a human being is also one and triune, and also called to be a community of love; to the Trinity of God corresponds a human trinity.
A human person is free, autonomous, indivisible and independent, and yet he is not self-sufficient, but needs two other people: his father and his mother, with whom he forms a relational triangle. Father, mother and son or daughter are the only categories of human life; every human being always belongs to two of them.
A man is not a father without having a wife and a son/daughter; a woman is not a mother without having a husband and a son/daughter, every human being is a son/daughter of a father and a mother; there are no single mothers. The Trinity consists of an individual coexisting with two others; the existence of one implies always the existence of the other two with whom he has affective bonds, forming a triangle of love.
The bond that we have with our parents is so intense, so strong that they are a part of us and us a part of them. When they pass away, even in old age when they are more dependent on us than we are on them, it can feel like the world is collapsing on us. “To leave is to die a little, it is to die to what one loves,” as the French poem rightly puts it. When they leave, we die a little and we will never be the same again.
It comforts us the possibility of building another relational triangle and of being parents ourselves, but we never recover completely from the clash that we suffered from their deaths. The mourning for parents will always be an incomplete mourning; I will always remember how my mother in her old age would still shed tears for my grandmother although she had passed away a long, long time ago…
Because Man is one and triune, the human being is whole within himself, but also at the same time, part of another whole: his family. Human life is always a triangular life: outside of the triangle there is no human life. When a son/daughter leaves the triangle of his/her family with another individual of the opposite sex, he/she forms another triangle. The relationships between all these triangles form the social fabric, the family, the clan, the tribe, the people and the nation.
But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Mark 10: 6-8
For a Catholic marriage to be valid, it must be “ratum et consummatum”, ratified in the Church where the priest, citing the gospel, declares the two a single flesh, and consummated in the intimacy of the conjugal or sexual act, where the two become one flesh. And at the very moment when the two are one, there are three: from this union a new being arise, so that the human being is One and Triune.
We are either a father, a mother or a son/daughter, each of these individuals implies the existence of the other two. Human beings don’t exist by themselves, they coexist in a trinitarian bond of love, just like God.
Humans are Intrinsically interdependent
- Genesis 1:27 - God created humankind in his image, (…) male and female he created them
- Genesis 2:22 – (…) the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman
Having the two truths of human nature separated into two different accounts, however, created a problem. Over time the second account was dismissed as being male chauvinistic and the first became overly evaluated.
“Male and female he created them” sounds as if humans could exist in two different completely independent and unrelated modalities. The original idea behind the Greek myth, that they were once one and are now broken into two interdependent halves that seek to become whole again, is lost.
The individualistic modern Western culture, born out of the French Revolution, has over-stressed the value of the person above the community, freedom over equality, and fraternity, independency and autonomy over interdependency. There are all sorts of philosophies and philosophers that back these values in detriment to the value of the community and interdependency.
There are no philosophers and philosophies that advocate individuals as being just half, incomplete, intrinsically indigent, and interdependent at the core of their existence. In fact, only God is whole in himself and complete, humans don’t exist like islands in completeness and self-sufficiency; they only exist in halves and have to find completeness outside of themselves together with other humans.
So rather than debating over the two different modalities or versions of human existence as if they could exist on their own or by themselves, male/female should refer to incompleteness, to indigence, and should be for us a permanent reminder that we are somewhat incomplete, insufficient, imperfect, partial, unfinished, only half of a human being, not just at sexual level, but at all levels; we are interdependent because we are incomplete.
Full humanity and the sense of completeness can only come when we enter into an intimate relationship with another human being. So, male/female instead of being regarded as a different modality or version in which humans exist, they should be looked at as if in themselves, on their own they don’t make sense.
In all honesty, with human nature there is no existence without coexistence, so we could as well get rid of the word and concept of existence and use only coexistence. If we are honest with ourselves and true to our human nature, we will have to admit that we don’t exist, we coexist.
Tridimensional thinking
“The children conditioned my existence, since they were born I have not thought in individual terms, I am part of an inseparable trio,” says the Chilean writer Isabel Allende about her own family experience.
As we have already said in speaking of the divine family, we are at the same time a whole and a part. Every single one of our cells, even though it is only an infinitesimal part of our organism, contains within it by way of DNA the complete information of the entire organism. It was on the basis of this principle that the sheep Dolly was cloned. This is possible because all of our cells are daughters of the “marriage” between the two half cells that united when our father and our mother consummated their marriage in the conjugal act.
The cell, being a living being in itself (like the amoeba being the unicellular organism), a unit, is a part of our body. The family, being a unit in itself, is a cell of a clan; several clans form a tribe, several tribes form a people, and several peoples form a country. There are no people who is not formed by other peoples. Being simultaneously whole and part is inherent of the human nature.
Why is there no human life outside of the family? Because we are at the same time a whole and a part; on one hand, we are free autonomous individual beings, and on the other, we are part of a family, a tribe, a people, a nation, and we will always live in this tension between the individual and the community. Our individual thinking cannot be individualistic, but must be tridimensional.
Often when I celebrate a wedding, I tell the bridegroom, “From this day forward, you will never drink a beer by yourself”; to which he answers, “But my wife doesn’t drink…”, “Yes, she does,” I say, “And your son drinks too.” The consequences of your actions will not only fall on you, but also on those who are triangularly united with you. And if the consequences of your actions also fall upon others, your thinking must also be tridimensional, that is, you must take them into account, and share and make decisions together, even on seemingly individual matters.
I cannot have the Frank Sinatra’s mentality of “I did it my way”, nor by the French expression of “to each of his own” or the Spanish one of “everyone knows of himself, God knows it all,” or the Italian “do for three what you do for yourself”. But rather, “Where is your brother?” God asks of Cain (Genesis 4:3-13), I need to always know where my brother is.
The Nonviolent Communication teaches us that there are ways to meet our needs without being at the expense of or at the detriment to the needs of others and vice versa. Either everyone wins or everyone loses, because no one can be happy at the expense of another person. Someone has said that a camel is a horse designed by a group of people. Following the process is more important than the final result. Both in the corporate and business world, knowing how to work with others is very important because this leads to greater well-being and productivity at work.
The love triangle or the Bermuda triangle
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” said Neil Armstrong as he took his first step on the lunar surface. The opposite is also true: we are all a family, an individual setback is a setback for the humanity.
Once upon the time there were two hedgehogs who were great friends. It was summer and they spent their time playing. Soon came autumn and it started to become very cold; the hedgehogs sought shelter under the leaves. Then winter came and the leaves were no longer enough for warmth. They then noticed that other animals slept together, clinging to each other to protect themselves from the cold.
They thought that this was an excellent idea. But as soon as they tried to do the same, it was only to find each running as fast as it could to its own corner. Each had pricked the other with the sharp quills on its body and blamed the other… it was necessary to find a way to settle in without injuring its friend. Night after night, they became more and more used to one another. With a little trick, they lowered their quills and lay down side by side, with a thousand care, so not to hurt nor to be hurt.
We are called to understand each other, as there is no plan B, there is no alternative, there is no going back. In the conquest of Mexico, the Spaniard Hernan Cortes ordered his caravels to be burned so to leave no escape route. All that was left for his soldiers was to move forward if they wished to survive. A little of this mentality would be very useful in Portugal today, where in every 100 married couples, 70 get divorced.
There were days I used to jump thirty yards to see you/ today I would jump thirty or more yards not to see you – says a popular song… Legend or truth, the Bermuda triangle is renowned for being a place in the Gulf of Mexico where it is said that ships and planes that come close to it would mysteriously disappear. How many love triangles turn soon enough into Bermuda triangles where individuals get lost.
The Father
You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you. Psalms 128:2
His absence may be physical, affective, cognitive and spiritual. This lack deprives the children of an adequate model of paternal behaviour. The growing working commitment of the woman outside the home has not found sufficient compensation in a greater commitment by the man in the domestic environment. (Synod for the family, 2015)
In the evolution of species, the paternal figure begins by having no role in the reptiles and mammals, and begins to play some role in the primates. The figure of the absent father is something that is still in the genes of the history of mankind; the absent father today is the same nonexistent father at the dawn of our evolution.
Unlike the woman who relates to the new person for nine months before it is born, the father is absent from this process, because he only planted the seed and is always a foster parent, absent. Without being able to feel the same as the mother, the modern father accompanies step by step the gestation of his child, feels with his ears the first kicks and assists at the delivery.
It is necessary that He must increase and I must decrease (John 3:30). Paraphrasing this verse of John the Baptist, it is necessary that the omnipresence of the mother in the life of the child decreases and the presence of the father increases. A mother hen will the worst kind of mother-in-law as she never cuts off the umbilical cord and believes she still has the right to her child.
So instead of pushing the child out of the nest as the swallows do with their young at the end of the summer, she wants to hold on to her child, and considers the daughter- or son-in-law as an enemy who “stole” her child from her. Children are not parents’, as they did not give them life because this was also given to them. Now they are called to pass it on to their children, they do not give, because they are not owners of life. They simply transmit what themselves have received – life.
An absent father ends up losing both his wife and his children. Since the providence of parents towards their children is assured by law, the woman easily converts an absence of fact into an absence of right.
For the children, it is more difficult to have this reasoning, because they are always children. A boy who grows up without a father, grows up without discipline, without a model he can identify with, and lives confused and lost. A girl who grows up without a father lacks a positive experience with the first person she meets of the opposite sex. In search of a father figure, she will date too early and will repeat with many men the relationship that she failed with her father.
The Mother
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Psalms 128:3
A more attentive presence of the father allows for a longer absence of the mother and a professional fulfillment of the latter, as well as individual growth of both. The time of the submissive homemaker has ended and Jesus was already and truly against these two clichés that throughout the centuries have enslaved women:
The vocation of a woman is motherhood
In those days when Jesus was speaking to the crowd, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” But Jesus said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” Luke 11:27-28
Jesus gives importance to this praise, and more important than physical motherhood, Jesus considers worthy of praise the motherhood of discipleship, to listen and to incarnate the word of God, something that Mary his own mother did, having been a disciple first and then a mother. Being a mother is a temporary role that fundamentally ends when the children are raised and educated. This is so among the mammals and, in some way, should have been incorporated into humans because it is the natural order of things.
A woman is also called to be a disciple, to follow the Master as did the male apostles, and to be fulfilled professionally as such. There is a place for her in the society. Historically, humanity has been going around in circles because it rows with a single oar, it has been flying like a bird with one wing. We want more women in the government and in all cells of the social fabric to make the world more balanced.
The woman’s job is to do housework
“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:38-42
Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to Him, was in the position of a disciple. Jesus places being a disciple above doing housework; here again the personal professional achievement of women should not be set aside for domestic work.
Of course someone has to do the housework, and this someone is all the members of the family: father, mother and children. Each one must do what each one can do. In other words, this also applies to the children: if they can already sweep the floors, clean the house, do the dishes and make beds then they should do them. The parents are not benefiting themselves or their children when they end up doing all the chores and not delegating age appropriate chores to their children.
The Child
Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Psalms 128:3
From the moment the two halves of human cells unite to form a single human cell, it forms something that no one can separate. The cell, as the building block of life of this planet, is indissoluble. The atom, which is the building block of matter, can be separated, as indeed has happened, generating atomic energy in the process; but a cell is indivisible, inviolable, and is made bulletproof: we can kill it but we cannot separate it.
Abortion is a crime, it is a disgrace of humanity. The human species, which is thought to be so advanced and rational, is the only species among all the animals that kills their own children. All of us alive today were once a single cell who are fortunate enough that no one had intervened in the growth and progress of our life from conception to birth. The same cannot be said of so many human beings on this planet who are called to life, but whose life was taken from them without having the opportunity to live it like the ones who killed them.
On the other hand, it is simply logical that the indissolubility of the cell that needs eighteen years of
guidance and protection to become an authentic human being, would require the indissolubility of the bond that gave rise to it. The model of a human family exists only in the human species; there are no families among the reptiles, because they have no childhood, as they are born adults. By the direction the species are evolving, the presence of the family seems to be increasing. Among the mammals, there is a time when the newborn lives with the mother and among the primates, there is a time when the newborn lives with both parents.
The human being is the living being that is the most vulnerable at birth and who needs the longest time of protection before reaching adulthood. That is why there is a human family. If human beings were born adults like the reptiles, the human family would not exist, they would copulate like the reptiles, but would not spend much time together. Faced with divorce, it is often forgotten that what is fundamental is the well-being of the children, their education and protection. Sadly, however, the reality is that the children are used as weapons to hurt and blackmail the other spouse.
Divorced parents believe that they will be forever free from each other, but this never happens. They will have to deal with each other for the rest of their lives, as long as they have transmitted life to a child. It will be a meeting at a crossroad or roundabout while the child spends a weekend or the vacation with the father or the mother, it will be a presence at an important occasion of the child, like at a birthday party – whatever it may be, the separation will never truly occur, because the same child speaks about the father to the mother or of the mother to the father.
In the past, there were orphanages for the many children born without a father. Nowadays, one calls these places homes and the users of these homes are children who have parents who are negligent. There are no institutions that can replace the family: those who are not loved unconditionally will never love unconditionally, and those who do not love unconditionally will never be truly happy, as they will never reach adulthood.
In these homes and in the educational centers, the State spends millions of euros on professionals and sophisticated therapies, almost without success, when all these children really need is the unconditional love of a mother and a father, however ignorant the parents may be of the latest techniques on how to bring up their children. The unconditional love of two parents would certainly have more success than all the professionals in education with their fancy therapies.
To transmit life, even an animal can do it. That is why today more and more people differentiate between biological parents and parents; not all biological parents are parents, not all parents are biological parents. To give birth without educating is like giving a person a machine without teaching him how to use it, without giving him the instruction book, the manual, to prevent him from ruining the machine. This is what happens when you bring a child into this world without educating him later.
It is not uncommon to find good professionals, who are also parents, who think that a son or a daughter is like a dog or a cat, and that as long as the child does not lack water and food it is enough.
A young couple, very successful professionally, searched in a store for a doll suitable for their daughter. But it seemed that they could not find it, despite this being the best doll store in the area, where one could find the most sophisticated dolls that could say “Mommy” and “Daddy”, and could even go pee.
After having tested various models and as they were still undecided, the assistant approached them and asked what kind of doll they wanted for their daughter. “Look, we are two very busy people and we spend a lot of time away from home; we would like to get for our daughter a doll that can entertain her in such a way that she’ll not miss us.” The assistant looked at them indignantly and retorted, “Sorry, but in this store we do not sell parents.”
Friendship is also trinitarian
The friend of my friend is my friend too – Portuguese proverb
The enemy of my enemy is my friend – English proverb
Whether you prefer the more positive Portuguese proverb or the more negative and treacherous English one, both proverbs imply that even friendship is somehow trinitarian; that is, there is never a bond that involves only two people even when they call themselves best friends. Friendship tends to expand, we see this in society when friends ask favours, jobs or positions for friends and relatives, and they are granted on account of this friendship much more than on academic qualifications.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
