A reflection by Fr. Piccolo (from the Review Credere).

Dedicating a Sunday to the Word of God is very important in our time in order to apply it to the experiences of the present moment, because the value we give to the Word of God is certainly also linked to our material world and to our human language. These two dimensions have never been separated even in the spiritual tradition of the Church. In his reflection on the Word of God, St. Augustine always keeps in mind its relationship and its meaning to our human language.

The Bible tells us that when God gave Israel the 10 commandments, His first words were an invitation to listen: Shema Israel. We should first of all listen to what others have to say, but we are failing to listen in our time. Listening is the ability to give attention to what others are saying and even to what I say. If we insist on speaking only, we shall not be able to listen to what the other is saying. We are living at a time when we are continually raising our voices, and this makes listening clearly impossible.

But the Word of God is also active. When God speaks, He is also acting. In the story of creation, "God said". Through that Word, He created. Even the language used in the administration of the sacraments is active speech. When I say, "I baptize you" in a liturgical context, those words perform something, and this is also very similar to human speech. When we talk, we are inevitably producing something. Our words are never without effect. Our speech always leaves its mark in history and, for this reason, we are responsible for what we say. On the contrary, today we are just blurting out words without taking into consideration the effect they may have. In fact, when we speak, we are always revealing something about ourselves.

An example that sums up all this is given by Jesus himself in the Parable of the sower. The seed represents the Word. What does the sower do? He throws that seed in every type of soil, and in this way that word is wasted because that way of speaking, that way of throwing the seed is indicative of the way God loves. God loves wasting himself. The way we speak says something about the way we relate. Our way of communicating says something about our way of loving. Contemplating the word of God also means placing ourselves before a manner of loving.