"How Does God Continue to Speak to Us in Our Busy Day?"

Session 2 - October 1st, 2004

In our first reflection in September this year, we spoke of the essential priority of "listening" to God's Word. Jesus Himself, in the famous Gospel passage of Martha and Mary, singled out Mary "who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak" while Martha was preoccupied with all the household tasks of hospitality, and stated that "Mary has chosen the better part." Lk10: 39,42 In the preface of Dei Verbum, our document for this year, the church underscores in the very first word the importance of "Hearing the Word of God." It is only by hearing (listening ) attentively to the living Word of God that we can proclaim it.

But how is it that God speaks to us in our busy day? What is the Word of God? How do we know Him? Where do we look for Him? More importantly, what does it mean that God speaks to us? How do we recognize His voice? Does He continue to speak to us? How does He speak? What does all of this tell us about our God?

The great prophet Jeremiah states: "When I found your words, I devoured them; they became my joy and the happiness of my heart." Jer15:16 Can you imagine eating the Word of God, devouring it, and that being the cause of joy for the great prophet Jeremiah? There seems to be a transformative effect. God's word changed him for the better. It was cause for his joy. Listen to Jesus responding to the tempter in the desert: " One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God." Mt 4:4 God's word gives life in a different and more significant way than bread itself, actual food. The Word of God is thus life-giving and cause for joy.

In this second reflection this year on this First Friday of October, we will begin to focus on the actual document, Dei Verbum (Word of God)- Chapter l--in an effort to answer some of the questions which I have just posed to you.

For starters, it might be helpful to know that the phrase Word of God has a fancy theological name. Do not be scared by it. It is Divine Revelation. In fact, that is the title of the first chapter of Dei Verbum. It is important to understand that when you hear the two words Divine Revelation, it is in effect another way of saying the Word of God.

We will walk slowly through this great document of the Second Vatican Council. In the first chapter there are five paragraphs (or articles). They are: 2.) Nature and Object of Revelation; 3.) Preparation for the Revelation of the Good News; 4.) Jesus Christ--Completed and Perfected Revelation; 5.) Faith--Our Response to Revelation and 6.) Truths Revealed.

Article 2--Nature and Object of Revelation

At the outset, it is clear that revelation is, at its deepest level, essentially the personal self communication of a living God to you and me and not simply decrees about God. Revelation is not primarily a list of propositions about God. Instead, God becomes the object of revelation

"Placuit Deo"--the first two words-- "It pleased God" set the tone. Out of love, out of His grace, He takes the initiative.

2. In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9)...

THEN--Goal--to have share in His divine life, access to God Himself:

...by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph. 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4).

THEN--There is an offer of friendship and dialogue with us. He desires our friendship.

Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col. 1;15, 1 Tim. 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex. 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar. 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself.

Each person is called to listen to God's Word and enter into communion with Him. He breaks the silence with us by His very Word. Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar writes about an encounter with God:

"Here and now, in my inescapable solitude before God, this encounter can take place. At this moment in time God's revelation is addressed, not to the people in general, but to me. The light of God's loving choice falls on me. Christ is born for me. He dies on the cross for me. He ascends to heaven in order to prepare a place for me. He will come again in glory to take me with him. I need to have a most vivid sense of this here-and-now uniqueness, I must rid my consciousness of every trace of the idea that I am merely part of a crowd going in the same direction, which might do just as well, if not better, without me. 'You are the man', says the prophet to David, pointing to him. The Word of God, solitary, magnificent, amid the vicissitudes of human history, turns to me, his face shining from his vision of the Father, and speaks to me. As in all human love, only more so, I am exposed; I have no one to hide behind. Each occasion is the first and only time, and love's Yes is as fresh as the days of creation." (Balthasar, Prayer p. 95)

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This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having in inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them.

"This economy of salvation is realized by deeds and words, which are intrinsically bound up with each other."--One of the most important sentences in the entire document. It breaks new ground. Deeds and words are considered integral to revelation. God's intervention in history and His continued presence in the sacramental life need interpretation by words. Thus deeds and words are intrinsically and inseparably related. Jumping ahead to Article 4:

4. Then, after speaking in many and varied ways through the prophets, "now at last in these days God has spoken to us in His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2).... To see Jesus is to see His Father (John 14:9). For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: Through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth....

Examples--Exodus without the words of Moses is ambiguous as is the Empty Tomb without the words of the Risen Lord. (Also the sacraments) Both deeds and words are essential to reveal the mystery at hand.

The last line of article 2 underscores the importance of Christ--mediator and sum total of revelation. He is the revealer and the revealed. Everything there is to know about our God Jesus Christ reveals.

...By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.

Articles 3 and 4--Stages of Revelation

The catechism teaches that God's plan of revelation is "a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to man gradually" CCC 53 culminating in the person and mission of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. Revelation is a successive and progressive intervention in history. In that same section of the catechism, we read that "St. Irenaeus of Lyons repeatedly speaks of this divine pedagogy using the image of God and man becoming accustomed to one another: The Word of God dwelt in man and became the Son of man in order to accustom man to perceive God and to accustom God to dwell in man, according to the Father's pleasure." CCC 53

3. God, who through the Word creates all things (see John 1:3) and keeps them in existence, gives men an enduring witness to Himself in created realities (see Rom. 1:19-20). Planning to make known the way of heavenly salvation, He went further and from the start manifested Himself to our first parents. Then after their fall His promise of redemption aroused in them the hope of being saved (see Gen. 3:15) and from that time on He ceaselessly kept the human race in His care, to give eternal life to those who perseveringly do good in search of salvation (see Rom. 2:6-7). Then, at the time He had appointed He called Abraham in order to make of him a great nation (see Gen. 12:2). Through the patriarchs, and after them through Moses and the prophets, He taught this people to acknowledge Himself the one living and true God, provident father and just judge, and to wait for the Savior promised by Him, and in this manner prepared the way for the Gospel down through the centuries.

Note the stages of revelation beginning from creation--first presence (Alaska cruise). Note also "salvific intent"--3 times word "salvation" AND "eternal life." All of this is preparation for the Gospel. 2 millennia of history from Abraham to Christ.

4. Then, after speaking in many and varied ways through the prophets, "now at last in these days God has spoken to us in His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2).

The catechism teaches: "In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one. St. John of the Cross, among others, commented strikingly on Hebrews 1:1-2: In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word - and he has no more to say ... because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty." CCC 65

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...For He sent His Son, the eternal Word, who enlightens all men, so that He might dwell among men and tell them of the innermost being of God (see John 1:1-18). Jesus Christ, therefore, the Word made flesh, was sent as "a man to men." He "speaks the words of God" (John 3;34), and completes the work of salvation which His Father gave Him to do (see John 5:36; Divine Revelation 17:4). To see Jesus is to see His Father (John 14:9). For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: Through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. Moreover He confirmed with divine testimony what revelation proclaimed, that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal.

Dwell, Tell, Speaks, Accomplishes.

"No new public revelation" --What does that mean? The Fullness of Revelation is in Jesus Christ. He is the never-to-be surpassed Word of God.

Article 5--Faith: Our Response to Revelation

5. "The obedience of faith" (Rom. 13:26; see 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5-6) "is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals," (4) and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him. To make this act of faith, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving "joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it." (5) To bring about an ever deeper understanding of revelation the same Holy Spirit constantly brings faith to completion by His gifts.

Faith is a response word. DV refers to it as "the obedience of faith"--a Pauline expression which means to submit to the Word of God once it has been heard precisely because its truth is guaranteed by God."

Faith is our response to God Who continues to reveal and communicate His love to us. It is our free response to a loving God who communicates Himself to us each day, every moment of each day, continually through Scripture and the on-going life of the Church that we call Tradition--the prayer life, the sacramental life, the teaching life of the Church as given us by our Pope and the bishops. Faith is at once a response to a person, to Jesus, AND it is a response to the message that Jesus teaches in and through the Church. Not unlike two sides of the same coin, it is at once "what" I believe, fides quae, the content of what I believe and at the same time it is the "event of personal surrender" to the God encountered now in and through Jesus Christ, fides qua, the Person to Whom I submit my life. Such surrender engages the whole person. "Men and women accomplish no more important act in their lives than the act of faith; it is here that freedom reaches the certainty of truth and chooses to live in that truth." FR13

The response of faith is not merely lifeless or academic. Nor does faith mean anything without love. It often demands sacrifice and ridicule. You and I know that from our experience of trying to live our daily lives at home and in the workplace.

St. Ignatius of Antioch, a second century saint who died around l00 A.D. , was one of many in the history of the Church who let himself be torn to pieces by the jaws of lions in the Roman arena rather than reject his faith. Cardinal Newman once wrote: "No one is a martyr for a conclusion, no one is a martyr for an opinion; it is faith that makes us martyrs." It is faith in a living person, in Jesus Christ, the Word of God. After all, we do not give our lives to a question mark.

The catechism unpacks this concept of faith. It teaches that faith is both a grace of God, a grace of God's love, an impulse of the Holy Spirit AND at the same time it is a free human act. Dei Verbum teaches that each of us "must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God." DV 5 If it were not a grace, it could not reach God Himself. If it were not a human act, it would not be a real answer of man. It involves an assent of the intellect and the will to God's self revelation, communicated to us in words and deeds.

Article 6--Truths Revealed

6. Through divine revelation, God chose to show forth and communicate Himself and the eternal decisions of His will regarding the salvation of men. That is to say, He chose to share with them those divine treasures which totally transcend the understanding of the human mind. (6) As a sacred synod has affirmed, God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty from created reality by the light of human reason (see Rom. 1:20); but teaches that it is through His revelation that those religious truths which are by their nature accessible to human reason can be known by all men with ease, with solid certitude and with no trace of error, even in this present state of the human race. (7)

Our next meeting is on the First Friday of November 5 and we will continue with Chapter II.