The Gospel of John starts out: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. - What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race,' Laura Kelly Fanucci, in Give Us This Day writes a reflection on this very scripture and asks: 'Which Word would Jesus be? He is a noun: solid and concrete, personal and present. He is a verb: active in our world, always on the move. He is a preposition: expressing relationship and linking everything. He is a pronoun: close and intimate. He is a gerund: the verb of eternal action. He is adjective and adverb: enriching and describing how to live.
This Word is also punctuation, every exclamation mark of joy, every question mark of mystery. He is thought and pre-thought, present to the non-verbal and the pre-verbal. He is our ears, lips, eyes, and hands — every way language is expressed. He is Alpha and Omega, every letter in every language, even the silence and space between words, where possibility dwells among us.'
We have had an amazing and rare four full weeks (Advent) to prepare to welcome the birth of Jesus who we call Emmanuel, God-with-us (Matthew 1:23). The invitation from the Lord is to put God within us.
There was an old song that went something like this: Great things happen when God mixes with us.
Hopefully, we have spent these Advent weeks longing and waiting for the arrival of our savior. Our Lord is already present to us in so many ways: through each other, the Word of God, and in our Eucharist.
These blizzard days, as I write this, have been an opportunity to come to greater prayer and hunger for the coming of Christ in glory.
One of our human mysteries is pain and suffering. Archbishop Oscar Romero, shot dead while saying Mass in San Salvador in 1977, advises us to put ourselves next to Christ. 'If people want to look into their own mystery —the meaning of their pain, of their work, of their suffering, of their hope —let them put themselves next to Christ. If they accomplish what Christ accomplished — doing the Father's will, filling themselves with the life that Christ gives the world — they are fulfilling themselves as true human beings. If I find, on comparing myself with Christ, that my life is a contrast, the opposite of his, then my life is a disaster. I cannot explain that mystery except by returning to Christ, who gives authentic features to a person who wants to be genuinely human. (The Violence of Love) I pray that your heart and mine will be hungry for the amazing gift of the presence of God within each of us.