Why "En Pocas Palabras"?

The title of this blog is En Pocas Palabras, or, if you like, In a few words. I mean this in an ironic sort of way, since I am not particularly good at saying things, or writing things, briefly. Most anyone who has heard me preach or has read what I occasionally put on paper will tell you this is true.

I guess you could say the title is also a goal or challenge I am reminded of every time I write something. A word is a sign present to the speaker by which something is understood, and which is then used to express and communicate this understanding to another. A preacher or a writer tries to configure the signs in such a way as to most effectively help the hearer or reader capture what is understood and intended. I have always thought that too many words obscure the message. Hence the challenge faced by anyone who works with words.

God the Father, after all, has only One Word, and this Word perfectly expresses everything that is in the Father. This Word became flesh. He came to us and spoke in simple yet strangely profound ways. The Fathers of the Church (Cyprian of Carthage comes to mind) would sometimes refer to the Lord Jesus as the Verbum Abreviatum of the Father, or, the brief Word. What He says to us is always short and to the point, and as we struggle to understand it, it calls us to an inexhaustible depth of truth about God his Father, and about our human situation. His Sacred person-- from which flow his words, deeds and sufferings-- is the full expression of the Goodness of God. And his words, deeds and sufferings, in turn lead us back to the mystery of his Sacred Person.

Our lives, our words, should aim to be simple yet meaningful expressions of the truth about God and about our human situation in relation to God. The challenge to preach, to write and to live is the same challenge: To draw closer to the simplicity and goodness of God as fully revealed to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. We are the complicated ones; He is quite simple. It is a challenge to seek his simplicity in thought and action. But we keep trying to move in that direction, by the grace of his coming, and we do not lose heart. In the meantime, I can happily accept the irony of the title of this blog enterprise.