Being “With” and “For” Another

John Paul II says that “alone,” man is somehow incomplete. Man was not really meant by God to be a solitary being and to live a solitary existence. We saw how, in his experience of solitude, of being alone in the midst of creation, Adam longed for another person like himself. The experience of solitude made man aware that, by nature, he is “opened up” towards a loving interpersonal relationship with another person. Man becomes aware that he was created to exist “besides,” “with” and “for” another person. In short, he is created for communion. (We often say: “No man is an island.”)

Man and woman were created not in order to complete with one another but to complement each other. Married couples, please remember this always in your married life. Man and woman were created to mirror the divine communion of person in the Blessed Trinity.


Quotes from John Paul II:

"...in his original solitude, man acquires a personal consciousness in the process of distinction from all living beings (animalia). At the same time, in this solitude, he opens up to a being akin to himself, defined in Genesis (2:18, 20) as "a helper fit for him..." In the Yahwist narrative, man's solitude is presented to us not only as the first discovery of the characteristic transcendence peculiar to the person. It is also presented as the discovery of an adequate relation-ship "to" the person, and therefore as an opening and expectation of a "communion of persons."


"...man became the "image and likeness" of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning. The function of the image is to reflect the one who is the model, to reproduce its own prototype. Man becomes the image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion. Right "from the beginning," he is not only an image in which the solitude of a person who rules the world is reflected, but also, and essentially, an image of an inscrutable divine communion of persons."

(TOB, 11/14/1979)