I saw before me a huge crowd which no one could count from every nation and tongue. They stood before the throne and the Lamb, dressed in long white robes and holding palm branches in their hands...They said, Amen! Praise the glory, wisdom and thanksgiving and honor, power and might to our God forever.
Old traditions used to say that wisdom consists in the knowledge of the Word. Give us this wisdom to be able to listen, to accept, to receive, to practice the hospitality of the words, paying attention, reacting consequently, being struck, touched, or caressed by the words that come to us. And let us also learn, in turn, to speak the right words, to affirm people who speak in a life-giving way, to recreate ourselves with our own words, because each of them sprouts from the same dynamism from which the plants grow, life unfolds, the universe comes into being. The word is word when it has a speaker, when it speaks about something; the word is word when it speaks with something. Give us, O Creator of Life, this depth, this awareness, and this tremendous joy to discover in ourselves that creative power that we can speak, emit, and receive living words, words of eternal life, words that come of the peace, of the silence, of the transparency of everything. And then we may be able, more and more, to understand the language of many other speaking beings that may not articulate as we do.