Human communication is frail yet full of all sorts of potential. At its best, it can be the bearer of love and affirmation, clarification and helpful facts, it can build and strengthen relationships. At its worst, it can be the bearer of hate and denigration, obfuscation and “alternate facts”, it can destroy and undermine relationships. We can use communication – whether it is through words or silence, rituals or symbols, physical gestures or facial expressions – to reveal and conceal, to cut and to heal.
Our capacity for communication is evidence that we are made in the image and likeness of God. Today’s Gospel – John 1:1-18 – reminds us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … All things came into being through him”. Jesus is God’s communication of Love. In him, God is saying: “Will you let me love you?”
We are at our best – our most human – when we use the great gift of communication with reverence and with care. It may help to remember that good communication is born of silence. It comes not from us but through us. Communication can be such a beautiful thing, a life-giving and enlightening thing. A liberating thing!
Both the beauty and the fragility – vulnerability? – of human communication is suggested in the following passage from a novel by John Gardner: “The girl at Buzz Marchant’s had a squeezed-shut face. She was a good girl, no doubt. Pretty, kind in the usual ways. Not intelligent, no, but not all saints were intelligent either. The thing was – he struggled to get hold of it, nail it down once and for all – but again it came merely to this: she had a face that marked her, singled her out not as the bearer of any particular virtue or defect but as, simply, the bearer of her singleness. In adolescent dreams one coupled with radiant beauties, with indefinite and lovely faces, but then one day it all turned real …: a girl one knew, with a name, brittle hair, a chin just a little too deeply cleft. That was love, if it was anything. Not the other. Not the sunlight, but the sunlight entrapped in the cloud” (John Gardner, The Sunlight Dialogues, Ballantine , 1973, 631). Not the sunlight, but the sunlight entrapped in the cloud!
At the very end of today’s Gospel we find a moment of “the sunlight entrapped in a cloud”: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known”. Christmas is preeminently the celebration of the birth among us of one “who is close to the Father’s heart”. This is the ultimate communication. And it might get lost amidst the busy-ness and noise, the stress and materialism that accompanies Christmas time. It would be unfortunate at a time of gift-giving if we missed the greatest gift of all.
My suggestion is that we approach these days with a listening heart. Slow down. Be a little bit more deliberate. Be attentive – especially in the most stressful moments. God’s Word is constantly being spoken to you personally: “Will you let me love you?”
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