The dialogue’s history of God with us knows -as the
famous incipit of the Letter to the Hebrews- a rich variation of
moments and mediation along the millennia. But it is not disjointed and
scattered events, because they have a point of arrival and of fullness,
an absolute and total experience, "but in these last days He has spoken
to us by His Son, who has established heir of all things and through
whom also He created the world "(Heb 1:1-2).
Not a purpose that cancels out any previous time,
but the recovery of the time and the mediation, in the fullness of
meaning and effectiveness of this condescension. In a personal
definitive presence, that the evangelist John sings and contemplates
with the famous expression: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us"
(Jn 1:4). "Now, the Word is not only audible, -says Verbum Domini,
taking an original expression of the Message of the Synod- not
only has a voice, now the Word has a face, so that we can see: Jesus of
Nazareth" (VD 12)
.
The Christology of the creation
The eternal Logos, through whom all things were
made and to which everything tends (Col 1:15-20), is always in a loving
embrace with the Father, consubstantial with the Father, with him
protagonist of the revelation in the liber naturae, and cosmic
foundation of the reality. For this, noting the creation, you can know
not only God the Creator and Father, but also its dialogic relationship
with the Son, because everything bears the imprint of this vital
relationship. We can also say that the creation is creatura Dei et
Verbi, and brings an inherent call to dialogue, a move to the
wisdom and the hope. For God did not create the things, but in tune with
his life and in view of a reditus (return) of dialogue and
communion. The nature brings an intrinsic groan and a transcendental
need, in the words of Paul (Rom 8:22), that must recognize and preserve
too, sharing to the cosmic amen. To recognize the reality, as
the revelation of the intrinsic life of God, means that we recognize in
this the first form of lectio divina: is a lectura mundi,
which also leads, as with the prayerful and reflective reading upon the
written Word in the Holy Scriptures, to a response of praise, of
adoration and obedience to Him who is the beginning and its ending, God
the source of life and light.
This is not an epiphany
that allows a vague deism, or the recognition’s feeling of a
deity without specification. With the progressive revelation, and
then implemented by a person to wait and to be accepted as "final" voice
and as face of the revelation of God, everything must be interpreted
with the Christocentric key, as converging towards him and in him
brought to a richness of meaning and of purpose. In this perspective we
can understand better the expression "the realism of the Word" (VD 10):
the divine Word is a solid and lasting foundation of all existing and it
gives consistency to the existence. "Lord, thy word is settled in
heaven" (Ps. 119.89), exclaims the Psalmist. And the mystics perceive
this immense ocean that is a stable foundation in God, and whose worship
was conducted through nights and glows, as John of the Cross sings :
"Mi Amado las montañas / los valles solitarios nemorosos / las insulas
extrañas / los rios sonoros ... "(My Beloved is the mountains, lonely
wooded valleys, remote islands, resonant rivers...).
The Word became One of us
In an unsurpassable way
that brings about the condescension of God in the Incarnation of His
Son, His unique and definitive Word offered to humanity, because it
takes a stable home and expresses the Father's dialogue with human,
audible and usable words (1 Jn 1:1 - 2). The Exhortation recalls the
words of Origen logos abbreviatus, widely used by the
Fathers and medieval men, helping to understand in the son of Mary the
creator Logos who became a singular, concrete, limited person in
Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus appears as a "solo" in a symphony of multiple
injections, Benedict XVI says: "In this symphony, at some point, there
is what might be called in the musical language a "solo", a matter
entrusted to a single instrument or a single voice ... This "solo" is
Jesus... the Son of man sums up the earth and the sky, the Creation
and the Creator, the flesh and the Spirit. He is the center of the
cosmos and of the history "(VD 13).
You couldn’t fully
understand the identity and the mission of Jesus, if you do not consider
that above all in him God is the God of our fathers, the God of the
cosmic Covenant with Moses, the God of the privileged Covenant with
Abraham and with the people of Israel, the God of the prophets and the
kings, and of the sages and of the psalmist (cf. VD 39-40). Without this
full and alive continuity it would be impossible to understand the
language and the same revelation of this Covenant. At the same time
Jesus brings to fulfillment symbols and figures, roles and expectations
of the Old Covenant, which were blocked in their revealing function. The
scene of the six empty jars at the wedding at Cana (Jn 2:1-10)
represents well this state of suspension (in the effectiveness): they
are empty, and then they do not even serve for the ritual purification,
but, filled with water for order of the new "husband" of Israel, may
contain the "good wine" that allows the definitive marriage of the new
and eternal Covenant. All the Gospels show to know this "fulfillment of
the Scriptures" in what Jesus does and says, sometimes literally,
sometimes with typological or geographical references. "Jesus shows that
He is the divine Logos who gives himself to us, but also the new
Adam, the true man, one who does at any time not his will, but the
Father ‘s will... He perfectly listens to, realizes and communicates the
Word of God to us (cf. Lk 5:1) "(VD 12).
John is the evangelist who
most certainly has excavated and found in this direction, holding out an
ideal arc: from the eternal pre-existence with the Prologue to the
eschatological fullness of the Apocalypse’s visions. But also showing in
extensive dialogues, which are a characteristic of his Gospel, this
continual reference to the will of the Father, this intimate unity of
purpose and love, of gift and communion: He says to Nicodemus, to the
Samaritan woman, in the frequent disputes with the Jews, scribes in his
head, trying to provoke him and contradict him; He develops it in the
discourse on the bread of life and in the complicated dispute over the
Feast of Tabernacles, He expands it so rich in the speeches of the last
supper.
The mystery of the speechless Word
There is also a shocking
vertex in the full revelation that Jesus offers, through his life. It is
his last Passover, when "the Word falls silent, becomes deadly silence"
(VD 12). This is a "great mystery" in which Benedict XVI has repeatedly
sought to draw the meditation: the silence of the Word, imposed by the
violence of the Cross, the darkness of "being among the dead”, for He
who is the source of life and of light. Even the Exhortation loves to
dwell on this experience, that the same old fathers have commented
several times with moving words. Such as Maximus the Confessor, whom the
Verbum Domini specifically mentions: "It is without a word, the
Word of God, who made every creature that speaks; the eyes of the one,
whose word and gesture everything that has life moves, are lifeless"(VD
12). Although with a few sentences, the explanation that gives our
Exhortation clearly shows that here there is the hand of a profound
theologian: "The freedom of God and the human freedom met definitively
in his crucified flesh, in a indissoluble bond, valid for ever... In the
bright mystery of the resurrection, this silence of the Word manifests
itself in its true and final meaning. Christ, the incarnate, crucified
and risen Word of God, is the Lord of all the things: He is the Living
One, the Pantocrator, and all the things are well summarized in
him forever "(VD 12).
Later the theme returns,
with a slight repetition (VD 21), but also with the invitation, to the
listener to the Word, trying to compete with the "silence of God."
Another sign is when it identifies the "sin as not listening to the Word
of God" (VD 26), especially with the refusal to accept this Word by the
revelation trough Jesus’ life. The radical obedience of Jesus, till to
be silenced in death, points the way for the true acceptance of God and
His Covenant.
Theological consequence of
this statement is that "Christology of the Word" and "Word of the Cross"
(1 Cor 1.18) come together in unity in the paschal mystery, to reveal
the fulfillment of all the Scriptures -and here the Pope likes to quote
Paul to the Corinthians, who says the death and the resurrection of
Christ occurred, "according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3-4) and
discovered an original logic of the Revelation- that "the victory
of Christ over death occurs through the creative power of the Word of
God "(VD 13). The Easter story has therefore a liberating
character, because through this transition from the aphasia to the
light, from the death to the life, the love of the Trinity shows the
regenerative force before the destruction of the powers of the evil and
the death, for the triumph of the life to the fullness. Jesus becomes
thus at the same time, "the First and the Last" (Rev 1:17), absolutely
the final abode of the Shekinah (cf. Ez 26.1).
The Contemporaneity of Christ in the Church
"The relationship between
Christ, the Word of the Father, and the Church can not be understood
simply in the terms of a past event, but it is a vital relationship" (VD
51). Here we enter into a further decisive factor for the fertility in
revealing, in dense meaning, the "Christology of the Word." The Church
is always in "Hearing the Word of God" (DV 1) and only with this
attitude it can persevere in its identity, in its dynamic community
"called" by the Word of the Lord and be witness and guardian of it. "The
Church does not live by herself, but thanks to the Gospel and by the
Gospel always, and again finds the directions for her journey" (VD 51).
We leave for now the major
theme of the Church that lives by the Word, that she celebrates and
announces, to concentrate for a moment on the fact that Christ, the
Word of God, continues to speak and to express the alive and effective
love of the Father in the Church and in the history. Christ has not
ceased to speak, but through the Spirit repeats and renews what He heard
from the Father, as revelation and projects, appeals and provocations.
Therefore the Word, again stretches and unfolds over
time, to the ends of the earth, and within different cultures, old and
new. There is an analogy between "the Word became flesh" (Jn 1:14) and
the Word made flesh, "book": "Christ, truly present in the species of
the bread and the wine, this is similarly, also in the Word proclaimed
in the liturgy "(VD 56). And even more: the exousía (power) of
the Word is offered by the Spirit outside of the liturgy, too, and we
must expose ourselves to it with a docile and prayerful heart. Because
"the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword
... and discerns the thoughts and the intentions of the heart" (Hebrews
4:12). And the Word does not execute it as a strange independent force
that remains in the air, but as the living and consulting presence of
Christ, under the impulse of the Spirit, qualified interpreter.
The time for a new hearing
of the Word and a new evangelization is not the time of independence
from the Eternal Word, the Word made flesh, but time and experience of
his presence, of his leadership, his guide. The "big bridal dialogue”
terminating the Scripture –
