Jan 24: The Word of God Comes to Save

Joos van Cleve: The Last Judgment (detail)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, c. 1520-25

Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, bishop and doctor of the Church

Reading I: Heb 9:15, 24-28

So Christ . . . will appear a second time . . . to save those who are eagerly waiting for him (NRSV, Heb 9:28).

Father, in the years immediately following the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, those who gathered to form the Church looked forward anxiously to their own resurrection in the body. Those among them who had died were considered merely sleeping in their graves waiting to be awakened by the archangel’s trumpet on the last day when Jesus would return and all who believed, those sleeping in the graves and those still physically alive, would share fully in his resurrection.

Father, your Word, come in the flesh in Jesus the anointed One, does not only come again in a given moment in the future however close or distant it may be. Your Word, Father, just comes. It is through your Word that you create everything that is. It is through your Word, Father, coming into the mother’s womb, that you call every human being into existence, empowering each one, yet without language or logic, in the Spirit to say “yes,” to receive that same Spirit and to become a human being, endowed with physical life and already a share in your divine life.

Having come at that first moment, your Word, Father, does not then return at another moment. Your Word just comes. He is always there, at each moment, challenging the human being to grow beyond what he has become up until then by letting go of his past and saying “yes” to a still greater share in your divine life.

When, blinded by the sin of the world, the web of all evil ever committed, and blinded by one’s own desires, a person turns away from you, Lord, and chooses another path, your Word, rejected, does not depart. Always coming into the life of every human being, your Word remains present, even when cast off, ever inviting to repentance, ever offering a renewal of divine life. The coming of the Word, the presence of the Word offering divine life, is a defining factor of human existence. What makes us to be human, and therefore divine beings, Father, is your presence to us through your Word.

Through your great love for all humanity, Father, your Word has taken upon himself a human body in Jesus the Lord, and has become one of us. As the Word continues to come into our lives at every instant, we look forward to that moment of promise, when having passed through the hour of glory that is physical death, and continuing always to grow in your life, we may eventually be united with you, Father, through the Word, your Son, in the Holy Spirit, in everything that we are, in the body glorified, as you glorify Jesus, your Word made flesh, in the body.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.