Address to the Graduates of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, Dominican House of Studies, Washington DC
16 May 2025
The Sign that is Christ, Evangelization, and the Poor
At the outset this evening Í would like to evoke for your memory’s retrieval the scene in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter 8) wherein Philip encounters the Ethiopian eunuch on his way home from Jerusalem. Í will not read it to you, Í just ask that you keep in mind what you remember about it.
Secondly, I want to suggest you recall the scene in the movie Amadeus where the Emperor, after hearing Mozart play a beautiful composition, praises the musical genius. But, he added, there are “too many notes,.. so just cut a few”. I mention this because I have found myself muttering the line recently to myself, only saying “too many words”.
Words are everywhere, in this social media, internet information, and Artificial Intelligence world of ours. We dwell in a most wordy world. I say this as someone who loves words, delights in and savors them. And it is for love of them that I urge myself and all of us to hear a call to deeper silence. The importance of silence speaks for itself.
1. The things Christ did and suffered
So, let us take a few sparse words from St Thomas to accompany our silences. In the prologue to the Tertia Pars. St Thomas says this:
Concerning the [Savior himself], a double consideration occurs: the first, about the mystery of the Incarnation itself, whereby God was made man for our salvation; the second, about such things as were done and suffered by our Saviour — i.e. God incarnate.
Listen to the concluding phrase about the consideration of the Savior himself: such things as were done and suffered [acta et pasa] by our Saviour — i.e. God incarnate. Thomas does not say “such things as were said, done and suffered by our Savior. This points us to two immediate observations.
First, many theological or apologetic discussions in our time are focused primarily on what Scripture texts say, as in “what does it mean when it says this etc.” Thomas, however, is not looking primarily at the words. He wants us to consider the things Jesus did and suffered.
As you can see from the content of this section of the Tertia Pars, the focus is on the mysteries. The Baptism, his miracles, the Transfiguration, his way of life etc, along with the treatise on the Passion that follows. The Lord had said to his pharisaical critics: if you do not believe me, believe the works I do (Jn 10,38). What works? They probably wondered. And what do they mean?
There is a parallel with the liturgical mysteries, obviously. And on the whole, this section of the Tertia Pars is epiphanic in structure. The Gospels, epistles and prophets are quoted extensively in this section, primarily to illuminate the theological sense of what is being manifested in the actions of Christ. The words the WORD spoke are the interpretive keys to the meaning of the acta et pasa of his life.
Someday I might ask AI to tell me how many times a form of the verb “manifestare” appears in the Tertia. Well, probably not. There is no urgency in knowing this, because it’s not primarily about how many times Thomas uses the word, it’s about how the word is used at key points in his explication of the revelation contained in Christ’s movement among us. The actions and suffering of Christ are saying something to us. Through them God the Word manifests himself to us. Christus manifestavit se.
2. The Word that is Christ’s Flesh
In St Thomas’ first lecture on the Letter to the Hebrews he makes a distinction between the expressiveness of material creation and human words.
An expression does not have the character of a word” Thomas says, “unless it is ordered toward a manifestation. Thus, it is clear [manifest] that the [material creation] expression cannot be called a word (locution), and thus it is never said that God speaks by creating creatures, but rather that he is known. Rom 1,20: through those things that are made the invisible things of God are understood.
So what is an expression ordered to manifestation? Well, primarily it is an intelligible sign that expresses what is interior to the speaker. Spiritual interiority expressing itself intelligibly to another is what makes an expression an actual word. Thus, for example, when God spoke to the prophets he gave them images and words that intended to communicate what was inside God. God speaks to us to intimate his interiority.
Now then, in his comments on Hebrews 1, Thomas goes on to the specific character of the Incarnation as in itself the complete intelligible Word of the Father made sensibly manifest to us. This, he says, “is through the assumption of the flesh, about which it is said in Jn 1,14. The WORD was made flesh, and we saw his glory, etc. And thus Augustine says that the WORD incarnate is to the uncreated WORD as the word spoken is to the word of the heart.”
Ah, always take note when Thomas cites Augustine. In this context, likening the spoken word to the incarnation signals two things: its exterior manifestation to the senses, and its character as a personal revealing of what is interiorly hidden “in the heart”.
In human communication, facial expressions, groans, nods and other gestures can point towards what a person holds interiorly, but these would remain enigmatic expressions until a sensibly intelligible word is produced. God the eternal WORD’s speaking himself into a human nature is the eternal WORD made sensibly intelligible, plainly manifested. He himself is the word he speaks. His humanity has all the characteristics of a word. An intelligible sign expressed sensibly, which renders accessible to us the inner life of the Speaker; God himself.
Thomas elaborates this ever so succinctly when he adds: “through the assumption of the flesh, the WORD is made man and he perfects us in the cognition of God: Jn 18,37: for this I was born, to present testimony to the truth. And he has thus expressly manifested himself to us. Baruch 3,38: Afterwards he was seen upon the earth, and shared his way of life with men [conversatus est cum hominibus].
From this perspective, the preaching and teaching of the Church, and our own words used to evangelize and catechize, are primarily aimed at unveiling the true meaning of the sign made visible to us, and that sign is Christ. This unveiling is the principal intent of the Treatise on the Life of Christ in the Tertia Pars.
3. Unveiling the Sign
A good example of this is Tertia Pars 46, 3, where Saint Thomas, explicitates why the Cross was necessary. Think of this passage as an example of his work as a teacher unveiling the meaning of the sign that is the Christ Crucified. For first point he makes, he says,
In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby provoked (stirred) to love Him in return, and herein lies the perfection of human salvation; hence the Apostle says in Romans 5:8: «God commends His charity towards us; for when as yet we were sinners . . . Christ died for us»
An incredibly rich passage, I will not attempt to explicate it all here, but I will highlight the beginning where he says that we know from the Cross how much God loves us and we are provoked (stirred) to love Him in return. [per hoc provocatur ad eum diligendum]
Salvation reaches us through an intelligible sensible perception of the Cross as the preeminent sign of love; salvation is perfected in us through an act of love returned. We are provoked to this response, he says. Among other things this passage illustrates the primacy of charity as the perfection of faith. And it makes clear that justification is the effect of this love given, perceived and returned.
Now let us remember again the account of Philip and the Ethiopian. In that episode there is a premium on spontaneity impulsed by another. “The Spirit said to Philip, Go and join up with that chariot.” So the Ethiopian “invited Philip to get in and sit with him.” The Ethiopian was pointedly reading from the prophet Isaiah:
This was the scripture passage he was reading: «Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In (his) humiliation justice was denied him. Who will tell of his posterity? For his life is taken from the earth.» Then the eunuch said to Philip in reply, «I beg you, about whom is the prophet saying this? About himself, or about someone else?» Then Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with this scripture passage, he proclaimed Jesus to him.
It is not clear if Philip answered the Ethiopian’s exegetical question. He did answer a wider, deeper one. There is a confluence of evangelical kerygma and catequesis in this passage. The explication of Isaiah precedes the moment when Philip “proclaimed Jesús to him”. The instruction centered around the meaning of the sign Isaiah spoke of, the suffering servant, and the light this sheds on the mystery of Christ’s Cross.
This in itself is worth pondering with the help of St Thomas: The sign of the Cross, first of all, must be interpreted, and it cannot be superseded. It remains the indispensable tangible word of the WORD. Philip offers the interpretation of the mystery of Christ’s suffering. As Philip for the Ethiopian, so we for our contemporaries, are explicators of the sign that is the Incarnation and self-emptying of the Word. No sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.
Flannery O’Connor said in her famous preface to the second edition of Wise Blood, that sometimes, what a person cannot do is the most significant thing about them. It was her description of the tortured main character of the novel.
Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.
I mention this because we cannot provoke a perception of the Cross as the primordial sign of the love of God. Nor can we provoke a response to that love manifested in Christ. Philip did not provoke the grace that moved the Ethiopian to request baptism.
There are some things the Church cannot do. We cannot provoke conversión programatically. Formation programs are not formulaic conversion programs. The grace of Christ can move us to mediate decisively the grace of his appearing (making himself manifest) in the lives others. Our mediations, however, operate at levels that are mostly enigmatically in our awareness. The grace of mediation moved Philip to chase the carriage. Yet Philip could not provoke the delicate perceptions of love intimated by his announcing Christ to the Ethiopian. Nor could he provoke a desire in the Ethiopian to move from faith’s perception to that charity which is offered back to God. All these things are Christ’s work, by the Holy Spirit.
“Freedom cannot be conceived simply”, Flannery said. Especially when it comes to our perceptions and responses to the Christ who is sovereign over how and when he appears to one who is beginning to perceive him. For the Church to admit humbly what she cannot do, is for the Church to confess her faith and love for, and docility to the Christ who is our Head.
4. Christ Jesus and the Social Magisterium of the Church: Explicating the Sign
Now, near the end of my too many words, let us recall the event narrated by St Luke (ch 4) where Jesus unrolls the scroll “and found the passage (from the prophet Isaiah) where it was written: «The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”.
because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.» Rolling up the scroll, Jesus handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, «Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.»
Jesus does not really explicate the passage . Rather he lets the passage be heard as an explication of himself. This is something, we really cannot do either, except in a participated sense. The messianic signs are proper in a literal sense to his person. What we can do is participate in his anointing and do the things that his identity and mission entail.
From this vantage point, the Church acts and suffers on behalf of the poor, the captive, the oppressed. And the Social magisterium of the Church is rightly understood as the explication of the sign that is Christ present in wounded flesh, and present in the one who attends the wounded.
We announce the poor Christ who gives us life through his vulnerability and his willingness to bear what the poorest among us bear. Christ bears his Cross in them. Ours is an evangelical narrative of human dignity rendered most intelligible by the Paschal Mystery: of the suffering, death, and rising of the WORD enfleshed, who seeks the lost. We are the lost, he found us; and his finding makes us seekers of the vulnerable, or we risk losing our gift of ever having been found. Whatever you do to the least of mine etc.
The Church pleads that all persons be respected for the dignity that is theirs. And we can never cease to defend the dignity of the powerless: the unborn, the disabled, the migrant, the elderly, all of whom can be counted among the poor precisely because they are largely defenseless before the arbitrary manipulations of the powerful. The world has its expendable populations.
There is an enormous manipulative capacity in this world deeply wounded by sin; and the Lord’s rising announces the victory of grace over it.
This manipulative tendency stifles the human agency of the poor, of their ability to speak and describe for themselves what moves and animates them. Their words, speaking of their deepest hungers for themselves and their families, are not often heard, and when heard, not much respected. Few, very few, political or economic leaders take the time, for example, to talk to an immigrant family, to get to know what their lives are about. For if they hear, they might have to rethink something, “lest they be converted and be saved”. We can hear the Lord Jesus say to us: It cannot be that way with you.
There is a tendency in our ecclesial cultures to see our service to and defense of the poor as of secondary importance, or even extraneous to the evangelizing mission of the Church. This is a severe misreading of the sign that is Christ. There are various aspects to the sign that is Christ, but the sign is one, because Christ Jesus is One.
We are enjoined to do the work implied in the messianic signs Christ said were fulfilled in his speaking them. In evangelization, this cannot be dispensed with. What we lack today is precisely a vigorous explication of how the things we do (our acta et pasa) on behalf of the Christ who suffers are signs of Christ Risen, active in the world.
Without the authentic signs of Christ in flesh, without the action of attending to him, through him, in others, our words are just more words in an already too wordy world. Words become hollow when their only sensible manifestation is a sound or scribble. When our words are expressed in flesh, we do the work of the Word. We must be about his work, and (as Thomas teaches) our explications must aim to unveil the intelligibility of the sign that is Christ Jesus, Crucified and Risen from the dead. The Lord himself will take care of the rest.
Thank you for your kind attention.
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Words and Things 