«MY WORDS WILL NOT PASS AWAY»

This Sunday we want to focus on Jesus’ statement: «My words will not pass away» (Mk 13:31), to ask ourselves: what is the word of God? Isaiah has an effective image to
describe at the same time the omnipotence and the poverty of the Word: «From the dust your word will resound like a whisper» (Is 29:4). The word is born silently from the dust of the earth and resonates like a “whisper”; it even emerges from the extreme negativity of pain and death (such is the symbolism of dust in the ancient East), and yet it transforms into “fire” (cf. Jer 23:29), into “honey from the rock” (cf. Ps 19:11), and into a “lamp that illuminates” (cf. Ps 118:105).
These are some of the innumerable metaphors that describe, within the great code of the Scriptures, the word of God. As the German philosopher J. G. Hamann observed – the Word reveals the greatness of divine contraries without eliminating any one of them; it is at the same time poverty and splendour, instant and eternal, transcendent and immanent. The Hebrew term dabar, which we translate as “word”, from an etymological point of view indicates the res, the profound soul of all reality, that which makes it exist but which, however, at the same time, remains hidden, concealed, covered. When God pronounces his word, he brings out and makes operative, first of all, what is behind and inside things; he reveals their face, their vocation, their identity in the miracle of a continuous creation. Enzo Bianchi notes: «This is why the word of God fills the universe, because it is the will inscribed in everything, because it is the sole source of all that lives. In the word of God we came into existence, we live, we move, we are, because it guides and emerges in everything; and if we hear his voice and remove the veil, we discover the true and profound reality; we suddenly find ourselves in front of the author of things who communicates with us».
In the NT, the term that indicates the word is logos. In Greek-Hellenistic culture, the logos recalls the idea of unity, the principle of knowledge, the law of the cosmos that has its reflection in the conscience of man. John, however, speaks to us of the divine Logos (cf. Jn 1:1-18), the supreme manifestation of God. The Logos is not only the hypostasis of a divine quality or attribute, but is Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten of the Father, the only one capable of narrating God to humanity (cf. Jn 1:18). For the Evangelist, the Logos is therefore the origin of everything (cf. Jn 1:3), the reason for everything, that which sustains everything: the anima mundi. This is why only in the Logos have we the intelligence (intus-legere) to understand reality and understand each other. The Logos is the great unifying centre of everything, where everything converges and is fulfilled. The effort of the believer, in listening to the Word, will be precisely that of recognizing and welcoming, in the mediation of the Scriptures, He who speaks (cf. Heb 12:25), He who is the revelation of God, the Logos tou Theou. In this horizon, Jesus’ affirmation that his words will never pass away, finds its truth.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey