THE HUMAN FACE
OF GOD
The fourth Gospel starts with a very special prologue. It’s a kind of hymn that, from the first centuries, decisively helped Christians to go deeper into the mystery encompassing Jesus. If we listen to it with simple faith, even today it can help us to grow in Jesus profoundly. We’ll only dwell on a few central affirmations.
«The Word of God became flesh». God isn’t mute. God hasn’t stayed silent, enclosed forever in Mystery. God has desired to communicate Self with us. God wants to speak with us, tell us of God’s love, explain God’s project. Jesus is simply the Project of God made flesh.
But God hasn’t communicated Self through concepts and sublime doctrines that only the learned can understand. God’s Word has become incarnate in the tender life of Jesus, so that even the most simple can understand, those who know how to be moved in the face of goodness, love and truth that makes up his life.
This Word of God «has lived among us». Distances have disappeared. God has become «flesh». God dwells with us. In order for us to meet with God we don’t need to leave the world behind, but come close to Jesus. In order to get to know God you don’t need to study theology, but live in harmony with Jesus, communion with him.
«No one has ever seen God». The prophets, priests, masters of the law spoke about God a lot, but have never seen God’s face. The same thing happens today among us: in the Church we talk a lot about God, but none of us have seen God. Only Jesus, «the Son of God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known».
May we never forget it. Only Jesus has told us how God is. Only he is the source of coming close to God’s Mystery. How many meager and barely human ideas about God must we unlearn in order to allow ourselves to be attracted and seduced by that God who is revealed to us in Jesus.
How everything changes when we finally capture that Jesus is the human face of God. Everything becomes simpler and clearer. Now we know how God looks upon us when we suffer, how God seeks us when we’re lost, how God understands and forgives us when we deny God. In Jesus is revealed «the grace and the truth» of God.
Jose Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
