Eternal words

 “HEAVEN and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Mk 13,31)

    With these words that came from the lips of Christ, we now know where
we can get hold of eternity while still here on earth. It’s in
believing his words, no matter how mysterious and too fantastic they
may sound to us.

    We need to echo that response of St. Peter who, when asked if the
apostles would also go away from Christ when he talked about himself
as the bread of life, said: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words
of eternal life.” (Jn 6,68)

    Let’s convince ourselves more deeply and more consistently that it is
in God’s words, and now in ours, no matter how brilliant and
reasonable they may sound, that we can arrive at what truly is
important to us—our eternal heavenly bliss, and not just some worldly
goal.

    Our tendency is to supplant God’s words with our own, as if our own
words can just spring to us without springing first of all from God,
the origin of words and everything connected to them—our
communications, our education, our knowledge, etc. We distort that
basic reality by thinking we can just use words fully by our own
criteria.

    In fact, we call the second person of the Blessed Trinity not only as
the Son of God, but also the very word of God, the Divine Word,
because he is the entirety of God’s self-knowledge and the pattern of
the whole creation, his work “ad extra,” outside of himself.

    He is the very standard of truth, goodness, beauty, justice, and all
virtues and values by which we measure ourselves. And yet we can
corrupt that reality by practically making ourselves as the norm and
measure of these virtues and values.

    God’s words enable us to understand everything in the best way. The
Letter the Hebrews says so: “The word of God is living and effectual,
and more piercing than any two-edged sword; and reaching unto the
division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the
marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
(4,12)

    That God is the origin and goal of truth, goodness, etc. is a
fundamental truth that is often taken for granted now. And so, right
at the very foundation of our daily activity and communications, we
already have a big gap, like a congenital defect, that likely will
become worse as we go on with our daily routine that unavoidably uses
words.

    This is the condition that will increasingly alienate us from God,
keeping us in some kind of cocoon, making us increasingly oblivious to
God’s words and will. Things can be so bad that we can consider God’s
words not only as irrelevant and out of touch with what we call
reality, but also hostile to our very own humanity, our own freedom.

    This is what we see around. That is why instead of communication, we
often have miscommunication; instead of information, misinformation;
instead of charitable conversations, we have gossips, calumnies and
detractions.

    The many forms of modern and powerful modern information technologies
have also increased our confusion and temptations and sin. They are
like the modern Tower of Babel, throwing us into so many different
languages and mind-frames that we now don’t understand and care for
one another.

    In fact, these days we can frequently witness explosions of rage in
the discussions of what we call hot button issues. Verbal abuse has
become an epidemic, clearly showing that our use of words has been
detached from God whose essence is charity.

    Right now, many people are accusing others in indulging what they
call as mere talking points. They refer to the clever use of words and
rhetoric to make them appear knowledgeable and competent, if not to
deceive others, twisting facts and data, etc.
   
    They know how to be politically correct, which means that they only
use worldly criteria, or social and political norms, not the criteria
from God or from our faith, in their use of words.

    In normal times, there is nothing wrong with being politically
correct because that attitude usually reflects deeper religious
values. But these days, things have become so bad that to be
politically correct is almost synonymous to being foxy and sly, and
being so is not anymore a negative trait. It’s has become today’s
virtue.

    We have to return to the eternal words of God. We need to go back to
the gospel, to the doctrine of our faith, and live it.