“It is not good that man should be alone” because he “must discover the identity realized in relationship.” Thus Msgr. Guido Benzi, director of the National Catechetics Office of the Italian Episcopal Conference, opened the work of the XVI National Week of Study regarding Marital and Familial Spirituality, which concluded April 26 in Nocera Umbra (Perugia). The theme was “…male and female He created them (Gen. 1:27): the spousal roots of the human person.” In the Bible the anthropological dimension, according to Msgr. Benzi, “is founded upon the theological dimension: God, man, woman, and creation are seen in relationship. Adam is at the center of creation, but at the apex of all is Eve, created with the living material taken from Adam.” The story of creation is given structure by 3 prohibitions: “not to eat from the tree of the garden”, “it is not good that man be alone”, and that “man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two will become one flesh.” Man, Msgr. Benzi explained, “is differentiated from the totality of creation even if, though biologically diverse from the vegetable and animal world, he discovers himself equal to creation in as much as he discovers something in common with the other living creatures, coming from the ground. Finally man is diverse from his father and mother and differentiating himself from them is called to build his own life [in relationship].” The “unity of one flesh” is seen in “the project and action of God. All creation is orientated toward the union of two individual natures that are seen as different and have diverse physical characteristics and that must unify, become one flesh without insisting upon this, not being a possessor in its totality.” In synthesis, Msgr. Benzi concluded, “God gives to the human family, constituted as a primordial dimension, before original sin, the possibility to recognize itself in the other. Man recognizes himself, then separating, and finding the other, he unites and finds himself once again in the other in unity (one flesh): a totality of relationship is established because in the separateness and in the desire of unity there is the space for the liberty of the individual.”