The Pain in My Side

Each year during the Triduum, I lead and participate with a group of parishioners who pray the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer together. (Actually, we pray Morning Prayer together daily already, but we tend to gather a few more people during the Triduum.)

One line from the Office of Readings struck me this morning as if I'd never read it before. It is Jesus the Victor speaking to Adam whom he has gone to free from Death. He says, "My side has healed the pain in yours."

For context, there's the whole paragraph:

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

The entire reading is of course about the Lord freeing Adam from the death brought upon him through his sin, the sin that lost innocence for the whole human race. By extension, then, of course it is about how we are all freed from bondage to sin by Christ's victory over death.

This ancient homily was written before fundamentalism got its teeth into the book of Genesis. But what struck me is that while the text talks about sin, it was not Adam who opened his own side to create Eve. It was God. God caused the pain, if you will. And then, it says, he heals it. 

But no, I don't think the healed pain that this speaks of is just that God opened Adam's side, and now He's saying, oh, my bad, let me fix you up again. The opening of Adam's side and drawing forth Eve speaks about how on a deep level, human beings are created to be interdependent on one another, needing one another, accountable to one another, and indeed responsible for one another. The pain in Adam's side was that when Eve, a separate person, but also part of himself, faced the dragon, he stood aloof, mute, passive, actionless. The ache in his side, which he passed on to his offspring, was this "Am I my [wife's] keeper?" She's bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, but I'm totally tuned out from any sense of connection to her, or to myself that would arouse me to act when I see this assult on human dignity. "Ain't no my job."

Salvation is indeed union with God, and union with God entails communion with other human beings. In my days when I identified as a misanthrope, I really struggled to get that. It is the grace and power of God which creates both union and communion, and we are his co-operators in both. Love of God and love of neighbor are of a piece. And we will struggle with both until we accept and care for ourselves as the locus of receiving and giving of this love, and allow the pain in Christ's side to heal the pain in ours, where we mourn how our connections with others involve failure.