2023/02/13

78. Two Lives and the Vocation of Men

As discussed previously, if we delve into the words of God to the woman in Genesis, "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you" (Genesis 3:16), from the male perspective, we will uncover the responsibility for reproduction, or life, that God has asked men to have dominion over, and discover their male vocation. 

There is a clear difference between the words that God said when he created the creatures of the water and the air and blessed them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth" (Genesis 1:22), and his words when he created man male and female and blessed them, "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). From God's words to them, "Fill the earth and subdue it", we can infer that God had endowed humanity with the ability to practice birth control once human beings fill the earth. That is because they must not become extinct through starvation due to their continuing increase without end. We later find that this ability was bestowed on men as a mechanism of the male body, by the words "he shall rule over you," rather than on women, to whom God declared, "Your desire shall be for your husband." 

Males of animals other than humans perform reproductive behaviour subordinately to the female's oestrus. In contrast, in the case of humans, males act dominantly, independent of the female's oestrus. In other words, men can proactively carry out birth control. Therefore, men can prevent pregnancy and stop lives from being born that may be aborted. When a man reaches puberty, cells that give rise to sperm begin to divide inside his testes, and spermatozoa are produced. Men then have a cycle in which new sperm are made, and old sperm are absorbed into the body. In contrast, a woman's eggs are already fixed in number when she is a foetus, and no new ones are produced in her body after birth. In addition, a woman has no control over her own menstruation caused by the cycle of maturation and ovulation of her eggs for herself. God has made it the source of female sexual desire. Therefore, women have no function to control fertility in their body mechanisms. It is generally accepted that men have a stronger sex drive, but God has entrusted the ability to control conception to men. 

In the Bible, the last time God said, "fill the earth," was when he saved Noah's family from the flood that destroyed the whole earth. At that time, God made it clear that this vocation of responsibility for life was to men. The Bible states: "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth'" (Genesis 9:1). This was God's plan behind the fact that Jesus chose the twelve Apostles among men. The reason for instituting the Sacrament of the Eucharist at the last supper, to which only men, the Apostles, were invited, was to bring them into collaboration with the Holy Spirit in the birth of the Eucharist, in which God is present by the Holy Spirit. God's plan, as it has been from the beginning, chose men as collaborators of women, the bearers of human life, and the Holy Spirit, the bearer of God's presence. The Church must therefore provide the best educational programmes for men who have the mission to defend two lives to be called by their name (cf. blog №77), the human life and the life of the Eucharist.

Maria K. M.