A season to relish language deeper than words

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor says that the heart of the Christian story is the word made flesh. Christ’s language is sacrificial love which took him to the cross

One of my favourite accounts of a happy childhood is told by Laurie Lee in his delightful book Cider with Rosie. Early on, he describes his first day at school. As a new boy in the playground for the first time, he was nervous and frightened of the noise, the size and the numbers of his fellow pupils. Going into the classroom, the teacher was busy with the other pupils. She told him to ‘sit down there for the present’. The young Laurie duly obeyed and sat down quietly in his place. When he got home he was obviously upset and disappointed. His mother asked him whether he liked the school. He told her he wasn’t going to school tomorrow. When she asked him why not, he cried and said, ‘They told me to sit there and wait for the present.