THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE INCARNATION: LIVING THE WORD OF GOD

We are entering a new year, and it is a blessing to be able to experience it. A new year in the calendar should also help us to experience a new year of blessings. The new year should enable us to grow in our

love for Jesus. Have I made any resolutions to deepen my spiritual life, my vocation and my consecration?

To whom is God calling us? ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep it’ (Lk 11:28). The world needs people who live out the Word of God. How many problems would be solved if everyone set about living out the Word of God! How many families would be at peace if all their members lived out the Word of God! This is the experience we have through the couples’ apostolate in the Word of God groups. How many parents would be pleased with their children if the latter were concerned with living out the Word of God! How many parish communities would flourish if the choirs, liturgical groups and others lived out the Word of God! How marvellous it would be if all Christians were truly living out the Word of God! What happiness, what peace, what joy would radiate throughout the world! The world needs a new revolution: that of the Word lived out. This is what the members of the Word of God groups aspire to.

The Spirituality of the Incarnation consists in allowing Jesus to dwell within every member who lives out the Word of God. The Virgin Mary receives the Word of God within her. It is this mystery that we celebrate on the Feast of the Annunciation. She carries Jesus, nurtures him and offers him to the world. This is the mystery of Christmas; and it is Jesus who saves the world. If Jesus lives within us, if he is present within us, we are drawn towards this mystery of the Annunciation and of Christmas; then he will continue to save the members of his body and give them life, for ‘God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth ’ (1 Tim 2:4). This is the core, the essential aspect of the Spirituality of the Incarnation. ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20). Allowing Jesus to live within us—that is our spirituality. Jesus says: ‘Whoever loves me will keep my word. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them’ (Jn 14:21–23). When I accept the Word of God, when I live by it, when I say ‘yes’ to God, Jesus comes to dwell and live within me. On this subject, Pope Benedict XVI says in *Verbum Domini*: ‘Christ comes to dwell in our lives.’ Every Christian who believes, as Saint Ambrose reminds us, conceives and, in a certain sense, gives birth to the Word of God within themselves: whilst there is only one Mother of Christ according to the flesh, according to faith, Christ is the fruit of all. So what happened to Mary can happen to each one of us every day, as we listen to the Word of God and celebrate the sacraments.’

We consider that living the Word of God is like a magnet that draws Jesus into us. He becomes present within us just as at the Incarnation. Pope Saint John Paul II says, in his letter on the Rosary: ‘In the Rosary, the repetitive nature of the Hail Mary allows us to share in God’s wonder: it is the joy, the amazement, the gratitude for the greatest miracle in history. ’ The Incarnation is therefore the greatest miracle in the universe. Every Christian who lives by the Word experiences the life of Jesus within them. When Jesus lives within us, everything we do for him – such as evangelisation – is imbued with a powerful inner energy and a new fervour, just as Pope Paul VI said that one of the greatest obstacles to evangelisation is a lack of fervour (Evangeli Nuntiendi). And even if we do not open our mouths to preach or share the Gospel, Jesus, living within us, does so: he touches and saves, silently within us. When the Virgin Mary, already bearing the Son of God within her, simply went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, the latter, upon Mary’s greeting, was filled with the Holy Spirit. The child within her was filled with the Holy Spirit. What God expects of us is to embody his Word, to live out his Word. Often, we do too many things for God without Jesus dwelling within us. Then we are as though empty, like clanging cymbals.

Like the Virgin Mary, our main task is to live out the Word of God. ‘My task, O Lord, is to keep your Word’ (Ps 119:57). If this is our task, then we must devote ourselves to it; we must be ‘professionals’ in living out the Word in this new year.

Henri Bayemi