4 September 2015
Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Col. 1:16: “for in him all things were created….”
The Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, is called the “Logos” in the Gospel of St. John. “Logos” is generally translated “Word” – “In the beginning was the Word” – but in his writings, Pope Benedict expands that: “’Logos’: word, meaning, love.” And so when we say: “In the beginning was the Word” we are saying “in the beginning there was Logos” and that means, that meaning and love were present before the entire visible universe was present.
The contemporary worldview might best be characterized by the word so popular among youth – “random.” Things are often described as “random” – and, for emphasis, “totally random.” This reflects the worldview taught in our institutions. The universe is full of stuff that “just is,” the movements are “random.” We happen to be “random” gatherings of chemicals, the most complex forms of this purposeless, meaningless gathering of stuff that has been going on …. Forever.
Well, that is quite the opposite of the Christian Gospel, that is, the Christian Good News. The Good News is that everything that is is created by a Creator, a Person: that everything is part of a meaningful reality. More: that meaning is at the very heart of reality. Random? Maybe some of what happens might be described that way, for freedom is bigger than we can imagine. And God’s order is other than our ideas, and might even contain what appears to our as yet unseeing eyes minds as disorder. Our Faith – which overcomes the apparently meaningless in life – tells us that all things were created in the Logos, the Word, named Jesus when He came to dwell among us, Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory raised into the eternal life where He reigns. Totally awesome.