It occurred to me that "it might be good to take a moment to reflect on the flow of Genesis," so I began by opening the New Testament. Immediately, the words, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love" (John 15:9) caught my attention. "I really must look at Genesis after all," I thought.

The Father loved the Son, who became the Word, and loves us with that same love. The "love" that the Son, Jesus, speaks of when He says, "Abide in my love, " refers to the Holy Spirit sent in Jesus' name. And the origin of Jesus speaking in this way must be found in Genesis.

With this in mind, I began reading Genesis, and what immediately caught my eye was the difference in the terms used to describe God in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. From the beginning of chapter 1 through verse 3 of chapter 2, the term used is "God," but from verse 4 of chapter 2 through the end, the term "the Lord God" is used.

In Chapter 1, the opening passage states, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light" (Genesis 1:1–3). From this passage, we can imagine "God," working within the relationship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Next, the point at which the term shifts from "God" to "the Lord God" is found in Chapter 2: "In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up -- for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground" (Genesis 2:4–5). The "man to till the ground" was the way of being God had established for humanity from the beginning, so that the command God gave to humanity—"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth" (Genesis 1:28)—might be fulfilled.

God first desired that man become one who would serve the earth, which he was to subdue. To this end, God breathed into man the "breath of life, " so that man might possess a spirit. This was so that man, created in God’s likeness, might be connected to the Holy Spirit and placed within a relationship with God. The phrase "the Lord God" used here is thought to express the relationship between the Father and the Son.

This state of relationship between God and humanity closely resembles the state in which we, together with the Holy Spirit, participate in the Mass before the Blessed Sacrament. Undoubtedly, Jesus has restored this state to us believers in the Mass.

Maria K. M.