Feast of Saint John the Evangelist
When I was two years old, I began to read without being taught – or so I was told. I don’t remember a time in my life when I could not read, so this is likely true. Soon, I was able to find TV shows in TV Guide. Then, while in the family car, I was naming other cars I could see: Ford, Plymouth, Volkswagen, Studebaker. (Yes, Virginia, Studebakers still prowled the earth when I was a toddler; it wasn’t the car itself so much but the name ‘Studebaker’ that fascinated me for some reason.)
Then, of course, came books. And books. And more books. The written word opened for me one door after another. By the time I was six or seven, I discovered fascinating new worlds nearly every week, and I couldn’t read about them fast enough: astronomy, prehistoric life, the human body, history. My little brain was like some vast, parched plot of earth that absorbed every drop of rain the skies would give it. All these wonders – and many more – came to me through the written word. How powerful the word is!
As powerful – even magical – as the written word may seem, we celebrate the feast of one who came to understand that a man he had encountered was not only the promised Messiah of old, but was the Word, the Son, the One through whom God the Father spoke fully and completely. The Word which has always existed, and through whom all things were made. The Word which had now become flesh so that creation might be re-created in and through Him.
John offers himself as a witness to this very Word, a Word he himself saw and could touch in the flesh. John offers us his writings, the Gospel and Epistles, as means for us to encounter this same Word and to come to a deeper faith – a faith that will make our joy complete. If reading words about dinosaurs or stars could bring me that much joy as a little child, how much more will knowing the Word bring me (and you and everyone who believes) joy and peace, faith and love? If the universe itself could engender in me such wonder, how much more would the Word through whom all was made engender still greater wonder?
In a cynical and all too “streetwise” age, wonder may be hard to come by and still harder to admit to. Everyone has an “angle” and everything is meaningless – or so they would have us believe. But ponder for a moment just the written word. What wonders have you encountered in what you have read all your life? What wonders were given you when you were little and someone read to you? What characters have you grown to know and love, all because of the written word? Now look to the stars above, and the wonder that they offer to the open heart and mind. Gaze on the wonders of our earth. Ponder the wonder of the person standing near you. Think of the Word that brought everything into being and who sustains it all in being every second of its existence. Let yourself wander in wonder. Let yourself be that child again, when you discovered things such as this for the first time. Feel what it means when the Word says, “See, I make all things new!”