Reverence for the Word of God

Today we celebrate the feast of St. John, the apostle.  He opens his Gospel with the following truths of our faith: In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God…Through him all things came into being….The Word became flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that he has from the Father as only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:1, 14). When the Word of God spoke at the time appointed by the Father, you and I were created in God’s image.  Each of us is a word spoken by God. Through the prophet Isaiah, Yahweh reminds  us that no word returns to God  “void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it” (Is 55:11). You and I will not return to God until God has accomplished in us and through us what God desires of us: a woman or a man who reflects the image of God in a world deprived of light, truth and integrity.

When others encounter us, do they see, hear, touch the heart of their Creator or have we substituted a false god in the choices we make and the words we speak?  The choice is ours to make. Yahweh says to us in Dt. 30: 19: Choose life, not death. In other words, we have the choice today to be a “word” of life, not death, in each of the choices we make.  We are free to accomplish God’s will or to sidestep that process by doing what Adam and Eve did in the Garden, choosing to do their will and not God’s. The consequences will be the same for us as for Adam and Eve—we deprive ourselves of “the paradise” that God intended for us and the freedom to be one with God in the choices we make today.