On November 28, 1981, Alphonsine Mumureke was in the dining room at her high school in Kibeho, a small village in southwestern Rwanda. She heard a voice. It was a woman, veiled and beautiful. Alphonsine asked her who she was. “I am the Mother of the Word,” answered the woman.
 
It was the first appearance of Our Lady of Kibeho, who would return to visit Alphonsine and two of her schoolmates over the course of the next eight years. She left with them an urgent call for repentance, along with a prophecy of the Rwandan genocide that would come to fruition in the next decade.
 
I have always found it compelling that Our Lady chose to identify herself in this way at Kibeho. The Mother of the Word. A title so simple and so concise, but so heavy with meaning.
 
“In the beginning was the Word…” says the Gospel of John in its opening lines.
 
But what is the Word? Is it spoken, or is it felt? Is it seen, written, heard? Is it shouted or whispered? Is it scribbled across pages that will one day dry and disappear? Is it carved into stone tablets, or on the nameplate above a cross? Is it poured over our foreheads? Is it set ablaze in a bush? Is it etched into our hearts?
 
It is all of these things, yes, but it is more, still. The Word is not something that is merely spoken. It is not merely written. The Word is something that is done. It is something that we must choose to do.
 
Our Lady of Kibeho lamented that this world “has neither love nor peace.” “If you do not convert and heal your hearts, you will all fall into an abyss,” she warned.
 
But how do we convert our hearts? What snatches us back from the brink?
 
It is the Word, spoken. It is the Word, carried out. Not just one, and not just the other, but both.
 
“Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls.” — James 1:21