Vatican City, 12 December 2013: As we prepare for Christmas we will do well to keep
a little 'silence to hear God speaking to us with the tenderness of a father and a
mother, said Pope Francis on Thursday morning during Mass he celebrated at Casa Santa
Martha in the Vatican.
Beginning with the reading from the Prophet Isaiah,
the Pope emphasized not only “what the Lord says” but “how He says it.” God speaks
to as a father or a mother speaks to their children:
“When the child has a
bad dream, he wakes up, cries . . . the father goes and says, ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t
be afraid, I’m here.’ That’s how the Lord speaks to us. ‘Do not fear, you worm Jacob,
you maggot Israel’ (Isaiah 41,13). The Lord has this way of speaking to us: He is
near . . . When we look at a father or a mother who speaks to their little child,
we see that they become little and speak with a voice of a child and with the manners
of children. Someone looking in from the outside think, ‘This is ridiculous!’ They
become smaller, right there, no? Because the love of a father and a mother needs to
be close. I say this word: to lower themselves to the world of the child. . . . If
the father and mother spoke to them normally, the child would still understand; but
they want to take up the manner of speaking of the child. They come close, they become
children. And so it is with the Lord.”
The Greek theologians, Pope Francis
recalled, explained this attitude of God with a somewhat difficult word: “synkatábasi”
or “the humble and accommodating disposition [condiscendenza] of God who lowers Himself
to make Himself one of us.”
“And so, the father and the mother also say ridiculous
things to the child: ‘Ah, my love, my toy . . .’ and all these things. And the Lord
says this too, ‘you worm Jacob,’ ‘you are like a worm to me, a tiny little thing,
but I love you so much.’ This is the language of the Lord, the language of the love
of a father, of a mother. The word of the Lord? Yes, we understand what He tells us.
But we also see how He says it. And we must do what the Lord does, do what He says
and do it as He says it: with love, with tenderness, with that condescension towards
the brethren.”
Pope Francis referred to Elijah’s encounter with God, when the
Lord came to him as “a sweet breeze” (cf. 1 Kings 19,11ff), or, as it says in the
original text, “a sound of silence”. That is how the Lord draws near, with that resonance
of silence that is proper to love. Without making a spectacle.” And “He becomes small
in order to make me strong; He goes to death, with that condescendence, so that
I might live”:
“This is the music of the language of the Lord, and we, in the
preparation for Christmas, ought to hear it: it would do us so much good. Normally,
Christmas seems to be a very noisy holiday: it would do us good to have a little silence
and to hear these words of love, these words of such nearness, these words of tenderness
. . . ‘You are a worm, but I love you so much.’ [Let us pray] for this, and to be
silent in this time in which, as it says in the preface, we are watchful in waiting.” Source:
VR Sedoc