The Incarnate Word: Light, Mystery, & Truth
The Incarnate Word: Light, Mystery, & Truth
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2024
Sunday July 21, 2024
My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
“The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.”[1]
This fundamental teaching of our faith gives the work of our lives direction and form. As Christians our identity is drawn from the light of Christ, and the essential tasks that follow from that identity are to understand ourselves and the world in the light of Jesus Christ-who has come to us and is with us-and to intercede for the world in prayer, worship, imitation, and service of Jesus Christ.
For us to do this with attention, intelligence, and diligence, we must understand the true axis upon which the world, and each of us, turns. As St. John says in the opening lines of his gospel:
“In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”[2]
First, if what St. John is telling us is true, let us consider the obvious. If Christ, the Word of God, is the one through whom all things came into being, then Jesus cannot ever be extra to our existence, or to our lives. Rather, He is the center of it. In other words, if we are to understand ourselves, the world, and live fulfilled as humans, we can no more dispense with Jesus and His grace and truth than we could dispense with physics in having a correct understanding of reality.
You know, my first axiom in trying to understand life is that reality always asserts itself and the longer you ignore reality, the more violent is its reassertion. So, it’s important we strive for a deep, expansive view of reality and recognize, that across many fronts, there are concerted efforts to narrow our vision of reality, to nullify and delegitimize vast fonts of insight, truth, and beauty. This is mostly accomplished by propagandizing us into thinking that each one of us, as isolated individuals, is the only sliver of reality we can know. Such a reduction of reality is actually driving us crazy. Every measurable marker of mental health, social relations, and societal well-being bears this out.
Second, if what St. John says is true, and Jesus Christ is light and life, then should we move away from Christ, we will see death and darkness expand. I think a cursory glance of the news indicates there is ample evidence of the move away from Christ and an expansion of death and darkness, at home and abroad. Now, the death I refer to here is twofold:
Death in the physical sense brought about when we lose sight of the inviolable dignity of every human life in communion with Jesus Christ, thus giving ourselves over to self-destruction, killing, violence, wars, and a rejection of human purpose and generation.
But death also in the intellectual and spiritual sense. If we came into being through the Word of God, Jesus Christ, and our fulfillment as humans is brought about by our Holy Communion with Him, then to cut ourselves off from this communion is to deprive our intellect of essential knowledge and our soul of its vital, sustaining principle.
C.S. Lewis, aptly described this situation of truncated knowledge and hollow spirits, when he said:
“Such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”[3]
Finally, the darkness to which St. John refers, is also twofold. The first darkness is one in which you’ve heard me talk about often but, it’s something I don’t think when can state too often: the nullification of God. Now, when I talk about the nullification of God, I mean something much more than just “we don’t believe in God.” Nullify means, at its very root, that the social worldview-the mentality-which surrounds us insists that not only do we adhere to the idea that God does NOT exist and that Jesus Christ is not “really real”, but we adhere to-and enforce-the notion that the very idea of God, as revealed, is completely irrelevant and a mark of lunacy, and Jesus Christ is, at best, a myth or a piety, but not the Son of God.
And even if He was, who cares?
The question, “and even if He was, who cares” takes us to that second darkness of which St. John speaks, the darkness of nihilism, which is ascendant in our day:
“Nihilism means nothing is true, everything is allowed, and nothing matters. It means that the confidence we had that we could discover the truth and that we could regulate our conduct in common by a commitment to a certain set of values had collapsed.”[4]
If we look around the world today, I think we can plainly see this form of darkness, known as nihilism, is real force at work in the world and in the souls of many. Just take notice of the indicators of despair and sadness and aimlessness and joylessness and we can gauge how this nihilism is affecting us personally, communally, and as a civilization. It is not an accident that one of the most popular TV shows of the last decade was called, “The Walking Dead.” This is what happens when darkness advances, when we let the light retreat, and when we get hollowed out spiritually.
Now, I realize most of us are not likely to commit death work acts of nihilistic violence like we see on display with tragic regularity. However, awful as the various outbreaks of violence are, the most common expression of nihilism, which can tempt us all, is to be superficial in our most serious commitments. To succumb to a feeling that we can pursue our ‘happiness’ at the expense of others, eschewing the true and the good. We capitulate to nihilism when we jettison our promises and commitments-which are embodied truths and goods-for the sake of comfort and convenience. This ongoing expression of casual nihilism, more than many acts of horrible violence, is what disintegrates our person and denudes a society of meaning and purpose, which, in turn, opens us up to ever higher probabilities of senseless violence.
In the face of this, let us be convicted that death does not have the last word, that the light does not have to retreat, nor must we concede that it is inevitable that people continue to fall into darkness. As St. Paul teaches us:
“In Christ Jesus you who were far off have become near by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through the flesh…that He might create in Himself one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace…He came and preached peace to you who were far off…for through Him we…have access on one Spirit to the Father.”
In order to be effect agents of extending this peace which Christ has already established and to bring people nearer to Jesus, perhaps a few questions will help focus our thoughts and aid us in refining our efforts:
Do we have the courage and confidence to direct the world around us to Jesus Christ?
We will invite the “scattered sheep” to encounter Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and come to know Him in “the breaking of the bread?”
Do we have the courage and the will to speak to those being assaulted and tempted by the various contemporary dark myths and death works, which surround us?[5]
Are we willing to shine the light of Christ and His truth into the darkness and bear witness to the fact that truth is real?
Are we willing to stand up and say that not everything is allowed, even if is popular or socially acceptable, precisely because truth is revealed in reality?
Are we willing to witness to the fact that things- our actions, our thoughts, and our words- matter? That we matter?
Will we testify that Jesus Christ is here, within us and among us, in His Holy Church?
Are we willing to confidently witness to the reality that Jesus really communicates Himself to us in Word, Sacrament, and Communion?
Are we willing to make growth in our personal communion with Jesus; of being created anew through Christ, in Christ, and with Christ, through the grace of the Holy Sacraments as the priority of our lives?
As we prayed at the opening of the Holy Mass, “show favor, O Lord, to your servants and mercifully increase the gifts of your grace” and so we will pray at the end, “graciously be present to your people, we pray, O Lord, and lead those you have imbued with heavenly mysteries to pass from former ways to newness of life.”
It is precisely this newness of life-this transformation of life-found only in Jesus Christ that each of us needs-and of which-the world needs witness. As mankind is plagued by the various forces of death and darkness, it is incumbent upon each of us as disciples of Jesus, and collectively as the Church-the Body of Christ- to bear witness to the Incarnate Word, shedding light on the mystery of man: hopeful, loved, enlightened, ennobled, redeemed and resurrected by Jesus Christ through His Heavenly mysteries.
“For His name’s sake,
He guides me in right paths.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
With your rod and your staff
That give me courage.”[6]
[1] Gaudium et Spes, 22.
[2] John 1: 1-5.
[3] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Touchstone, 1996), pp. 35–37.
[4] Robert Pippin in conversation with Johnathan Bi, podcast: “Overcoming Nihilism with Nietizsche”, July 12, 2024.
[5] Cf. William Batchelder, The Philosophy of Philip Reiff: Cultural Conflict, Religion, and the Self, Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.
[6] Psalm 23.