He Speaks in a Baby's Cry

“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”  St. John 1:18

God speaks to His people.  This is where all Biblical religion begins, with a God who knows us and who addresses us, who wishes us to know Him and the truth about Him.  He has spoken, our Epistle lesson says, “at sundry times and in divers manners.” 

All things began with His speaking, “let there be,” and it was—by the Word, Saint John assures us, “everything was made that was made.”  God speaks through the creation itself—in vistas that take our breaths away, in the ordered progression of sun and moon, in the complex laws of nature.  The heavens tell His glory, the Psalmist assures us,[1] and all things return the cry, “bless the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.[2]”

God speaks in the conscience, our common faculty for knowing right and wrong, that “light that enlightens every man that comes into the world.”  He speaks through our deepest longings and highest aspirations, our yearning to know that which is noblest and best, and to be united with it.  He speaks in our desire to love others, in our search for deep stillness, in our persistent sense of justice. 

For Meditation: The Peculiar Properties of Love

Quoted from St. Francis de Sales in my morning reading, Hughson's With Christ in God:

"These gifts (the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit) are not only inseperable from charity, but they may be called its peculiar properties.  The gift of wisdom is nothing more than love which has discovered by experience how sweet the Lord is.  Understanding is a love which attentively considers the truths of faith, to penetrate the depths of their sweetness, and to fathom the abyss of the divinity, descending afterwards from the knowledge of the Creator to that of His creatures.  The gift of knowledge is a love which we apply to the knowledge of ourselves and creatures, as conducive to the knowledge of the Almighty, and tending to impart a correct idea of the homage due to Him, by the consideration of His perfection and our extreme misery.  The gift of counsel is a species of love by which we vigilantly seek the best means of serving God perfectly.  The gift of fortitude is also the strength which love communicates for the execution of whatever has been suggested by the gift of counsel.  Piety is likewise love which alleviates suffering and labour by inspiring a filial affection, and a joy in performing such actions as are pleasing to our heavenly Father.  Finally, the gift of fear is evidently love, since it urges us to avoid all that is displeasing to God" (310-311).