Excerpts from Georgette Blaquiere's book: "Oser Vivre l'Amour"

IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

In the first story of Genesis, God creates and blesses. " God says: let there be light… and there was light…. And God saw how good it was…" However, with the creation of mankind, God's attitude changes. Just before creating man, God stops in his work of creation. He reflects and thinks and says, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."(Gen. 1, 26) Suddenly speaking in the plural (Trinity), God seems to gather a divine mysterious council. What He is about to do is so important that it needs to be thought about beforehand. Then we read,
"God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them."(Gen. 1, 27)

We are called by God to be his IMAGE. Likeness is the inner dynamic that will transform us, little by little, into the image of God. As St. Paul says, "All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit." (2 Co. 3, 18) Here is what lies deep inside EACH of us. Each of us individually, even the worst of us, carries deep inside ourselves the call to go from likeness to likeness, becoming God's image. In fact, we frequently say of a child, "he looks more and more like his father!"

The great revelation of the Gospel is that Jesus came to reveal to us the face of the Father so that "when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1 Jn. 3, 2)
Everything is given from the very beginning of humanity, but given as a small seed. As time passes, we, in our fullness of freedom, are called to become more and more human, meaning to become more and more the image of God, and meaning more and more HOLY! These are all the same thing! From the very beginning, holiness is our horizon.

"God blessed them, saying: be fertile and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it." (Gen. 1, 28) The fertility that God bestowed on mankind reflects the creation of man and woman in the image of God, the fertile Creator who is an explosion of life! This "lover of life" God has created a couple who will be, in love, his image and bearing his image will be fertile and will multiply and subdue the earth.

For the creation of the material world God said, "Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures…let the earth bring forth all kinds of living creatures…" He has let these creatures reproduce by themselves, through their own inner dynamic, through their own laws. However, God speaks directly to the man and the woman with these words, "Be fertile."

Fertility is bestowed on the human couple primarily because man is made in the image of God.
But is also given to prolong the human species. This point is very important in the Christian Revelation, for human sexuality is not first of all a natural necessity or a need or a pleasure given to maintain the human race as in the animal world. Rather, it is first a spiritual calling to be like God because God is Life itself and the giver of life.

"Male and female he created them."

The second story of the creation is much older. It is not a historic story, certainly. In fact, it goes deeper than that because its purpose is to reveal to us God's project for Mankind.