Verbum Domini - 8

In our today’s programme we bring you the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, meaning, the Word of the Lord, of Pope Benedict XVI, which is a reflection on the Twelfth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops held in 2008, devoted to “The Word of God in the Life and the Mission of the Church.” This document which is being considered as the most important Church document on Holy Scripture since the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, published in 1965. Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, said that the purpose of the document is to communicate the results of the Synod; rediscover the Word of God – a source of constant ecclesial renewal; to promote the Bible among pastors; to help the faithful become witnesses of the Word of God; to support the new evangelization and ecumenical dialogue; and to foster ever greater love for the Word of God. It is addressed to the Bishops, Clergy, Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful and considers "the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church".
Part I of the Apostolic Letter Verbum Dei, the Word of God begins with the Prologue of John the Evangelist. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh" (John 1:1, 14). The novelty of biblical revelation consists in the fact that God becomes known through the dialogue which he desires to have with us. The Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum of the Second Vatican Council had expressed this by acknowledging that the unseen God "from the fullness of his love, addresses men and women as his friends, and lives among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company". Yet we would not yet sufficiently grasp the message of the Prologue of Saint John if we stopped at the fact that God enters into loving communion with us. In reality, the Word of God, through whom all things were made and who became flesh, is the same Word who existed in the beginning".
If we realize that this is an allusion to the beginning of the book of Genesis, we find ourselves faced with a beginning which is absolute and which speaks to us of the inner life of God. The Book of Genesis tells us that in the beginning God created heaven and earth. The Johannine Prologue makes us realize that the Logos, the Word, is truly eternal, and from eternity is himself God. God was never without his Logos. The Word exists before creation. Consequently at the heart of the divine life there is communion, there is absolute gift. St John in his first letter tells us that God is love, as the same Apostle tells us elsewhere, thus pointing to "the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny". God makes himself known to us as a mystery of infinite love in which the Father eternally utters his Word in the Holy Spirit. Consequently the Word, who from the beginning is with God and is God, reveals God himself in the dialogue of love between the divine persons, and invites us to share in that love. Created in the image and likeness of the God who is love, we can thus understand ourselves only in accepting the Word and in docility to the work of the Holy Spirit. In the light of the revelation made by God's Word, the enigma of the human condition is definitively clarified.
Explaining further the Word of God the Apostolic Letter says that in the light of these considerations, born of meditation on the Christian mystery expressed in the Prologue of John, we now need to consider what the Synod Fathers affirmed about the different ways in which we speak of "the word of God". They rightly referred to a symphony of the word, to a single word expressed in multiple ways: "a polyphonic hymn". The Synod Fathers pointed out that human language operates analogically in speaking of the word of God. In effect, this expression, while referring to God's self-communication, also takes on a number of different meanings which need to be carefully considered and related among themselves, from the standpoint both of theological reflection and pastoral practice. As the Prologue of John clearly shows us, the Logos refers in the first place to the eternal Word, the only Son, begotten of the Father before all ages and consubstantial with him: the word was with God, and the word was God. But this same Word, Saint John tells us, "became flesh" (Jn 1:14); hence Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, is truly the Word of God who has become consubstantial with us. Thus the expression "word of God" here refers to the person of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father, made man.
While the Christ event is at the heart of divine revelation, we also need to realize that creation itself, the liber naturae, is an essential part of this symphony of many voices in which the one word is spoken. We also profess our faith that God has spoken his word in salvation history; he has made his voice heard; by the power of his Spirit, as the Nicene Creed says, "he has spoken through the prophets". God's word is thus spoken throughout the history of salvation, and most fully in the mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection of the Son of God. Then too, the word of God is that word preached by the Apostles in obedience to the command of the Risen Jesus, as communicated to us through the Gospel of Mark: "Go into the entire world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation". The word of God is thus handed on in the Church's living Tradition. Finally, the word of God, attested and divinely inspired, is sacred Scripture, the Old and New Testaments. All this helps us to see that, while in the Church we greatly venerate the sacred Scriptures, the Christian faith is not a "religion of the book": Christianity is the "religion of the word of God", not of "a written and mute word, but of the incarnate and living Word". Consequently the Scripture is to be proclaimed, heard, read, received and experienced as the word of God, in the stream of the apostolic Tradition from which it is inseparable.
Now, when we hear Jesus commissioned his disciples in this way, we understand Him to be speaking to the church as a whole. This commission, this assignment, belongs to the whole church. But not everyone, obviously, is called to be among those who go out into the entire world and proclaim. And yet, no one in the church is left out of this commissioning, because there are other roles, other supporting ministries to be undertaken and fulfilled. And one role that everyone is called to fill is prayer. As the Synod Fathers stated, the expression "word of God" is used analogically, and we should be aware of this. The faithful need to be better helped to grasp the different meanings of the expression, but also to understand its unitary sense. From the theological standpoint too, there is a need for further study of how the different meanings of this expression are interrelated, so that the unity of God's plan and, within it, the centrality of the person of Christ, may shine forth more clearly.
When we consider the basic meaning of the word of God as a reference to the eternal Word of God made flesh, the one Saviour and mediator between God and humanity, and we listen to this word, we are led by the biblical revelation to see that it is the foundation of all reality. The Prologue of Saint John says of the divine Logos, that "all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." Paul in his Letter to the Colossians speaks of Christ as the first-born of all creation, and that all things were created through him and for him. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews likewise states that by faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear. The author tells this in the context of faith which is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.
For us, this proclamation is a word of freedom. Christian freedom does not mean we do whatever we want to do. It does not mean that we exercise ourselves in any way we want. It is freedom to do what is right. For the first time in our life when we became Christians we had the capacity to do what was really right, what was really good, what was really true, what was really honest and just and righteous. Christian freedom is to do something positive for Go in Jesus. Scripture tells us that everything that exists does not exist by chance but is willed by God and part of his plan, at whose centre is the invitation to partake, in Christ, in the divine life. Creation is born of the Logos and indelibly bears the mark of the creative Reason which orders and directs it; with joy-filled certainty the psalms sing: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth"; and again, "he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth". All reality expresses this mystery: "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork". Thus sacred Scripture itself invites us to acknowledge the Creator by contemplating his creation. The tradition of Christian thought has developed this key element of the symphony of the word, as when, for example, Saint Bonaventure, who in the great tradition of the Greek Fathers sees all the possibilities of creation present in the Logos, states that "every creature is a word of God, since it proclaims God". The Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum synthesized this datum when it stated that "God, who creates and conserves all things by his word, provides constant evidence of himself in created realities".