All Saints of the Society of Jesus

The word is already in our mouths and in our hearts—our mouths and hearts.
Our mouths are full of words—we taste them bitter or sweet; we watch them find their target; we hear them echo in silence; we squander them in the rush and bluster of lives tumbling downriver.
Our mouths reveal our hearts, betray us with every breath. We trample the world with the word of our mouths. With them we utter the praise of our hearts. With our mouths we express the depth of our hopes or we evade with a casual lie. Words are so easy to us—and so hard. So cheap. So dear.
Why can’t the word come to our ears? Why can’t we receive it, hear it, weigh it, store it away. Turn from it or take it up. Why can’t it come to us unbidden? Why can’t it intrude upon us, demanding, imperative, hungry to be heard? Why must we find the word in our mouth? Why must it be one of our own, friend and brother to all we have ever uttered?
It is our own word that finds us, that burrows down, finds our heart and undoes it. Familiar. Strange. Blessed and broken. The word already in our mouths and already in our hearts. We have only to carry it to completion.