October 26, 2025 // Columns

To Embrace God Himself

Father Mark Hellinger

As we approach the end of the liturgical year, something that is worth pondering anew is the role of the word of God in our lives. Often, we can come into Advent focusing on Christmas (which of course makes sense), but I propose that as the liturgical year comes to a close and we prepare to begin the cycle of the celebration of the mystery of salvation anew, we do well to ponder the power and role of God’s word in our lives.

When we consider the word of God in the sacramental economy, what we are really being invited into is to step back and realize that the creative action of God, which we read about in Genesis, is one of speaking. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” A more literal way to translate that could be: “God said, ‘light’ and light came into being.” There is a performative value not just to God’s will in creation but in what He speaks. The word of God brings creation into being. Thus, we also see the Trinity’s life as pouring out from before the foundations of the world precisely because the act of creation involves an expression.

God’s word is at work in the world throughout the history of salvation. As the author of Hebrews says: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the ages. He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature, upholding the universe by His word of power. When He had made purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name He has obtained is more excellent than theirs.”

Pope Benedict XVI helped spell this theme out more in his exhortation Verbum Domini (“The Word of the Lord”), writing: “A deeper understanding of the sacramentality of God’s word can thus lead us to a more unified understanding of the mystery of revelation, which takes place through ‘deeds and words intimately connected’; an appreciation of this can only benefit the spiritual life of the faithful and the Church’s pastoral activity. Thus, the word proclaimed in the liturgy has a different character than the word when it is read privately. The sacramental context of the liturgy gives the word a different performative power of as the presence of Christ.”

And this takes us to the second point: The word is most active in the liturgical assembly (the context of Tradition in the most proper sense). This is true precisely because the Scriptures as the word of God are written down by people of faith for people of faith – yet always remain charged with the very efficacy of being the Word of God Himself. Louis Bouyer beautifully draws this out in his explanation of the assembly of God as convoked by His word: “The liturgy in its unity and in its perfection is to be seen as the meeting of God’s people called together in convocation by God’s word through the apostolic ministry, in order that the people, consciously united together, may hear God’s word itself in Christ, may adhere to that word by means of the prayer and praise amid which the word is proclaimed, and so seal by the Eucharistic sacrifice the covenant which is accomplished by that same word.”

God’s Word made flesh is what convokes us to the liturgy, to become through, with, and in Him the Mystical Body assembled before the heavenly altar to hear God’s word anew and to allow it to transform us by its proclamation.

Further, we always must keep in mind the reality that the liturgy is the proper context for the proclamation of the word of God in the Scriptures and the proper understanding of them. The liturgy teaches us how the Church understands the Scriptures and therefore teaches us how to read them. One of the qualifiers used to determine if the books of sacred Scripture were divinely inspired was if the book had been used widely in the liturgy of the Church throughout the first churches. Why? Because the word that is given to us is inseparable from the liturgy we celebrate.

As Dom Guéranger famously stated, “It is in the liturgy that the Spirit who inspired the Scriptures speaks again; the liturgy is tradition itself at its highest degree of power and solemnity.”

What a gift we have received in the word of God handed down to us by the Church in the holy Scripture!

Father Mark Hellinger is the pastor of St. Jude Catholic Church in South Bend and Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lakeville.