‘Your Words, Lord, are Spirit and life’

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT’S the responsorial psalm of the readings of the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary time, Year C. The disciples of Christ, who found Christ’s teachings incredible, were finally made to understand that the words of Christ, who is indeed the very word of God, are what would give them—and us—the true Spirit and life meant for us. (cfr. Jn 6,63)

What therefore should our attitude be toward the word of God? I would say that basically it should be the same attitude that we have toward God himself. And the reason is this—since God is absolute simplicity with no division, parts or distinction in his being, his word must be his being, his whole divine substance himself.

We, on our part, make some distinction between God in his being and in his word because that is how we understand things in general. We need to distinguish and analyze things, breaking them into parts, before we can arrive at the whole, integral picture.

In fact, in the Trinitarian nature of God, the Second Person whom we refer as the Son, is described also as the very Word of God, the Divine Word, who is God himself insofar as he perfectly and fully knows himself and all his creation. So, God’s word is God himself!

The word of God which now comes to us through some human and natural instrumentalities through the Gospel or the Sacred Scripture together with Tradition and the Church Magisterium, should be regarded in that light.

Its primary purpose is to bring us back to God. And so more than just giving us some helpful earthly and practical knowledge, it gives us the ultimate spiritual knowledge we need to return to God. This character of God’s word is described in the following words in the Letter to the Hebrews:

“For the word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword, and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (4,12)

Its purely eternal, spiritual, sacred and transcendent nature is now subjected to the conditions of time, culture, history, etc., in view of how we are. But we should not forget that it is primarily purely eternal, spiritual, sacred and transcendent, which with our spiritual powers plus God’s grace we can manage to abstract from its temporal, material, mundane and prosaic condition.

Let’s remember that God became man. With his incarnation, the divine word assumes the nature of a human word. And just as God became man to bring man back to God, his divine word becomes human word to bring and reconcile us with God.

Since God’s word is God himself and God is everything to us, we have to understand that it contains everything for our needs, especially our ultimate need to be with God. All things true, good and beautiful are contained in the word of God.

Thus, insofar as our philosophies, ideologies, sciences, arts and technologies contain truths, goodness and beauty, no matter how technical they are, we have to conclude that they also come from God’s word and belong there also.

Our sciences, arts and technologies can only articulate the more mundane aspects of the Word of God. But they should lead us to God. They should make us achieve a more intimate relationship with God, with everybody else and everything else in the whole universe.

We should make God’s word the primary and constant source of our knowledge! Everything else has to be animated by it.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com