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Speaking Plainly

It is a dull, grey morning and we are reading Job at Vigils. Dull and grey outside it may be, but my goodness, there are fireworks in choir! What a magnificent work the Book of Job is. Reading scripture aloud is infinitely more effective than scanning the page silently. No wonder the Church exhorts us always to LISTEN to the readings of the liturgy rather than follow them in books or missalettes. Job is a dramatic text, of course, but even the drearier bits of Leviticus read aloud have an impact that would otherwise be wanting; and if the reader is sensitive enough to drop all idea of being an actor and simply allows the words to speak through her, that impact can be very great indeed. The trouble is, many readers want to improve on the Word of God by inserting themselves into the text; so we have grandiloquent flourishes and hyped up emotion and the result is . . . painful.

I have a notion that the solution to this conundrum is to be found somewhere or somehow in the life of the Lord Jesus. From that first cry at Bethlehem, when the Word of God first found perfect utterance though a human voice, to that last "It is finished", there has been no more reverent expression of God's meaning and purpose. I suppose we all have an interior notion of how Jesus spoke, and we edit out the passages that don't conform to our own ideas. It would be a good Friday exercise to go through one of the gospels and look at the different tones in Jesus' voice: the adolescent certainty with which he answered Mary in the temple; the sharp refutation of Satan in the desert; the commanding invitation to the disciples; the patient explanations; the teasing quality of his exchanges with those he met on the road; his anger with the money-changers in the temple or the hub-bub around Jairus's daughter. One might especially note the way in which he spoke to women since that very often escapes male preachers.

We are ourselves a word spoken by God. Our life's business is to learn how to proclaim the Word of God, and from whom can we learn it if not from Him?

(Domestic note: many thanks for the kind enquiries after Hopalong [a.k.a. Digitalnun]. The antibiotics have begun to check the infection which, as late as Wednesday, was still spreading, but recovery looks like taking longer than we had hoped. The patient is not her usual cheery self and says she will slaughter me if I describe her as being "comfortable". On the other hand, she is grateful not to be in hospital and is managing to do a little work at the computer. Duncan and I are growing in patience by the hour. Infirmarian.)