THE HUMAN FACE OF GOD
The fourth Gospel opens with a very special prologue. It’s a kind of hymn that from the first centuries decisively helped Christians to deepen the mystery contained in Jesus. If we listen to it with simple faith, even today it can help us to believe in Jesus in a more profound way. We’ll just dwell on some central affirmations.
«God’s Word became flesh». God isn’t mute. God hasn’t stayed quiet, enclosed always in Mystery. God has wanted to communicate Self with us. God has desired to speak to us, tell us of God’s love, explain God’s project to us. Jesus is simply God’s Project made flesh.
But God has not communicated Self to us by means of concepts and sublime doctrines that only the learned can understand. God’s Word has been incarnated in the tender life of Jesus, so that even the simplest can understand, those who know how to be moved by goodness, love, and the truth that encloses their lives.
This Word of God «lived among us». Distances have disappeared. God has become «flesh». God dwells among us. In order to meet up with God we don’t have to go outside of the world but come close to Jesus. In order to get to know God we don’t have to study theology, but tune into Jesus, commune with him.
«No one has ever seen God». The prophets, the priests, the masters of the law spoke about God a lot, but not a one of them has seen God’s face. The same thing happens today among us: in the Church we talk a lot about God, but not a one of us has seen God. Only Jesus: «It is only God’s Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known»”.
We mustn’t forget it. Only Jesus has told us how God is. Only Jesus is the source to get close to God’s Mystery. How many limping and scarcely human ideas about God have we to 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 grasp that Jesus is the human face of God. Everything becomes simpler and clearer. Now we know how God looks on us when we suffer, how God seeks us when we’re lost, how God understands and forgives us when we deny God. In Jesus we find revealed «the grace and truth» of God.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
