January 14

he Word of God did not remake his creatures as easily as he made them. He made them by simply giving a command; he remade them by dying. He made them by commanding; he remade them by suffering. "You have burdened me," he told them, "with your sinning. To direct and govern the whole fabric of the world is no effort for me, for I have power to reach from one end of the earth to the other and to order all things as I please. It is only human beings, with their obstinate disregard for the law I laid down for them, who have caused me distress by their sins. That is why I came down from my royal throne, why I did not shrink from enclosing myself in the Virgin's womb nor from entering into a personal union with poor lost humanity. A new born babe in swaddling bands, I lay in a manger, since the Creator of the world could find no room in the inn."

And so there came a deep silence. Everything was still. The voices of the prophets and apostles were hushed, since the prophets had already delivered their message, while the time for the apostles' preaching had yet to come. Between these two proclamations a period of silence intervened, and in the midst of this silence the Father's almighty Word leaped down from his royal throne.

From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.

HTML text prepared by David P. Steelman