GOD’S HUMAN FACE
The fourth Gospel begins with a very special prologue. It’s a kind of hymn that from the first centuries decidedly helped Christians to go deeper into the mystery contained in Jesus. If we hear it with a simple faith, it can help us today to believe in Jesus in a more profound way. We’ll focus on just a few of its key affirmations.
«The Word of God became flesh». God isn’t silent. God hasn’t kept quiet, enclosed forever in Mystery. God wanted to communicate Self with us. God wanted to speak with us, tell us of God’s love, explain God’s project to us. Jesus, simply speaking, is God’s Project made flesh.
God hasn’t communicated Self with us by means of concepts and sublime doctrines that only the learned can understand. God’s Word has been incarnate in the intimate life of Jesus, so that even the most simple people can understand it, those who know to be moved in the face of the goodness, love, truth that is enclosed in his life.
This Word of God «has found a dwelling among us». Distances have disappeared. God has become «flesh». God dwells among us. In order to meet God, you don’t need to go out of this world, but rather come closer to Jesus. In order to know God, you don’t need to study theology, but rather be on the same wavelength as Jesus, agreeing with him.
«No one has ever seen God». The prophets, priests, teachers of the law talked a lot about God, but not one of them had seen God’s face. The same thing happens today among us: in the Church we talk a lot about God, but no one has seen God. Only Jesus, «the Son of God, who is close to the Father’s heart, has made God known».
We mustn’t forget this. Only Jesus has told us how God is. Only he is our source to come close to God’s Mystery. How many limping and merely human ideas about God do we need to unlearn and forget in order to allow ourselves to be attracted and seduced by that God that is revealed to us in Jesus.
How everything changes when we finally catch on that Jesus is God’s human face. Everything becomes much more simple and clear. Now we know how God looks upon us when we suffer, how God seeks us out when we’re lost, how God understands us and forgives us when we deny God. In Jesus we find revealed «the grace and the truth» of God.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
