Today we commemorate the breaking of the Word’s silence.

The Word had freely confined itself to the mysterious quiet of the womb, foreshadowing the willful silencing of the same Word in the tomb. Today is Christmas, when the Word broke its silence not with a word of wisdom or an eloquent soliloquy, but with the cry of a newborn. At Easter we celebrate the Word’s breaking the silence and solitude of death with the language of a risen and glorified body.

In both cases, the Word entered the depths of human vulnerability, indeed, the most vulnerable of human vulnerabilities. There, the Word embraced the mystery of silence and spoke with his presence rather than with words. And in doing so, the Word reveals a profound, dual truth. In the first place, in the womb of Mary, the Word reveals a shocking dependence upon humanity. And in the tomb, the Word reveals a complete dependence on the Father and communion with him in the Holy Spirit. Dependence on God and dependence on others. These are profound truths of the human experience that allow for communication/communion even in the most silent of all experiences of solitude. In fact, the Word’s entry into the depths of our silence and his revelation of radical dependence reveals the way for us via communion that shatters the definitive silence of loneliness and non-communication that is hell. We depend on the one who communicates with us even in the depths of our most vulnerable experiences of silence — in the womb and in the tomb. 

In entering into the human experience, the Word twice subjected himself to silence. In doing so, the Word enters into the profoundest depths of our humanity as a presence that bespeaks the silent “yes” of love. Yet, as I think about this further, I see that the Word also silences himself in the Blessed Sacrament. Last I checked, bread does not speak. Yet in the silent bread, the Word bespeaks his presence yet again. This time, he does not knock on the door of an inn, but he knocks on the doors of our hearts. There was no room in the inn when the Word broke the silence of the womb outside of Bethlehem. In the Eucharist, he asks to be let in, that he might be born in the depths of our hearts, that our hearts might be transformed such that our lives bespeak the hidden Word that transforms and animates the whole of our lives. Yes. In the silence of the Blessed Sacrament, with divinity not hidden by the humanity of a little baby but hidden behind a veil of bread and wine, the Word breaks his silence again by conforming our lives to his and by speaking through us — if we let him. He breaks his sacramental silence in us.

Today is Christmas. Today, we celebrate the breaking of the Word’s silence. As we leave Mass today and engage with family members and friends, we become the means by which the Word breaks his sacramental silence, because we carry forth the Word in our thoughts, words, and actions.