The Only Word

We all know what it’s like to be at a loss for words. But sometimes, there simply are no words adequate to the moment. That’s an uncomfortable thing to say as someone who makes his living preaching words to others, but I’ve thought of that more and more in the last several weeks, particularly in light of the war in Ukraine. It struck me in a particular way two weeks ago when I learned of the terrible loss of life in the town of Bucha, where civilians – non-combatants ­– were tortured, brutalized, and killed. I thought “There are no words for this.” For some tragedies, for some evils, there is simply nothing to say.

I imagine that feeling might be with many of us today, right now, having just heard again the Passion of Jesus. Twice in one week now, we have read the account of an innocent man tortured, brutalized, and killed. It’s a tough story to hear, even for a non-believer, but for us who do believe, it’s even harder, because we hear the prophecy of Isaiah and we see it fulfilled in Jesus: “it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured; he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins.” Jesus, the Son of God, didn’t just die for us – he was killed by us, on account of our sins. When we begin to truly contemplate that, words fail us and we are reduced to silence.

And yet the purpose of today is not to feel deep sorrow, to be weighed down with shame, or even to be reduced to silence, but rather to hear the word that God speaks to us in the Cross. For while words may fail us, while we may not know what to say, God does – and the word he speaks to us is the Incarnate Word, his Son, dying out of love for us. In the Cross of Christ, we see reflected back at us all the ugliness of evil, all the nastiness of human hatred and jealousy, all the helplessness of death, and we see God’s answer to all of it – the love of his Son embracing all of it in order to take it away.

This is the deep mystery of today, the difficult truth that resists understanding. To contemplate that the Son of God died for us, for our sins, is a hard reality to stare in the face. But it’s even harder to understand that somehow that terrible death wasn’t the end of our relationship with God, but the fullest expression of his love, and the deepest sign that he could give that nothing can take that love away. That’s a mystery that truly defies explanation. It’s a truth that we must simply behold, in silence, and believe.

And if we do, we will see how, standing before the love of God revealed to us in the Cross of Christ, it is the only word we truly need. In the face of our sufferings and pains, our trials and tragedies, and above all our own deaths, all other words pass away, but this word remains. God offers this word to us still – he speaks it always – the word of his love, the word of his presence, the Eternal Word made Flesh, who suffered death this day out of love for us.