January 14
The silence
he Word of God
did not remake his creatures as easily as he made them. He made them by
simply giving a command; he remade them by dying. He made them by commanding;
he remade them by suffering. "You have burdened me," he told
them, "with your sinning. To direct and govern the whole fabric of
the world is no effort for me, for I have power to reach from one end of
the earth to the other and to order all things as I please. It is only
human beings, with their obstinate disregard for the law I laid down for
them, who have caused me distress by their sins. That is why I came down
from my royal throne, why I did not shrink from enclosing myself in the
Virgin's womb nor from entering into a personal union with poor lost humanity.
A new born babe in swaddling bands, I lay in a manger, since the Creator
of the world could find no room in the inn."
And so there came a deep silence. Everything was still. The voices of
the prophets and apostles were hushed, since the prophets had already delivered
their message, while the time for the apostles' preaching had yet to come.
Between these two proclamations a period of silence intervened, and in
the midst of this silence the Father's almighty Word leaped down from his
royal throne.
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from
Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
HTML text prepared by David P. Steelman
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