"God? God? If I could see him or hear him now! Where is this God of yours?"

That is the question that every sinner asks, at one time or another. And here is the secret revealed by God to Israel in shadows and intimations, and to all the world in the life and death and resurrection of Christ. God is not some despotic force, like Zeus sitting upon his throne, grasping his thunderbolt. He is almighty, true, and as almighty he is more than greatest and farthest of all. He is also the smallest and the nearest and most present of all, the very Being of beings. He was not in the whirlwind or the earthquake or the fire, as Elijah found, but in the still small voice. In all the centuries before Solomon, his presence does not dwell in some hulking temple meant to boggle man into insignificance, but in a small Ark, in a tent. He writes his laws not upon pillars, but upon the hearts of those who hear his word. And his word was made flesh and dwelt among us, a babe in a manger. This is the Jesus who came as a light into a dark world; yet the world knew him not. A bruised reed he would not break, said the prophet, and so Jesus moved among men both known and unknown, a king and yet a slave, the glorious only-begotten Son of God, and yet meek and humble of heart. To hear Jesus, then, is to look perhaps first to the small and near, and to listen.

- Anthony Esolen in the Magnificat for May 2011.