At a recent Sunday Mass, our curious kindergartner leaned over to me and asked why we trace a small cross on our forehead, lips and heart as the Gospel is about to be proclaimed. I remember asking my own mother the same thing at a similar age, and I still remember her response: "So that Jesus is in our minds, words and heart."
We think of the Bible as revelation without always reflecting on the profound content of what God is revealing. As Pope Paul VI’s 1965 “Dei Verbum” says, “Through divine revelation, God chose to show forth and communicate himself and the eternal decisions of his will regarding the salvation of men. That is to say, he chose to share with them those divine treasures which totally transcend the understanding of the human mind.”
A Eucharistic word: Embodied