Who is the Word?

 

The Word is Jesus the Christ who was made flesh for us.  He gave us himself – body, blood, soul and divinity.  In the Eucharist he gives us Himself both in his Body and in his Word. True, the words of scripture were composed by human beings but they were directly inspired to write and their writings became over time authoritative in the church and were, eventually, entered into the ‘canon’ of the New Testament.

Juxtaposing the Word and the Sacrament as if they were two completely separate realities is wrong. The church teaches that the Word is indeed the Word of God but not in the same way that Jesus is the Word made flesh.

We receive Jesus in the Word in the first half of the mass (the Liturgy of the Word) just as we receive him in holy communion in the second half.  The mass is a sign of how the Word of God is given to us not just as individuals but as a people gathered together. On Sundays and Holy Days the minister, typically, elaborates and explains and interprets the Word for the people. Though we do well to read and pray with the Word at home and elsewhere we never read the scriptures apart from the mind of the church.  In that sense we think ‘eucharistically’ because the Eucharist forms Christ within us as St Irenaeus wrote.