The editorial Inspiring the Hopeless in this newspaper on Christmas Eve was about the significance of the birth of Jesus Christ for the world. It mentioned how over the centuries the feast has been sanitised and it challenged the leaders of organised Christian religions to put the core message of Jesus Christ, which is to love one another, back where it belongs.
It so happens that someone commented to me in positive terms on that editorial. He is a psychologist and I doubt if he attends Mass or is an ardent supporter of the church into which he was baptised. He was impressed to see how the editorial saw the first Christmas as a story of rejection, discrimination and marginalisation.
Tomorrow’s liturgy includes a reading from the beginning of St John’s Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word; the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him.” And then later: “The Word was made flesh, he lives among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Words are powerful and associating the Word with God adds to the mystery and the intrigue of how we use words.
In my job as hospital chaplain I have learned at the coalface how important words are. I remember in philosophy class a lovely, intelligent but eccentric lecturer telling us that we can never take back our words. How right he was.
Last Saturday’s editorial quoted the American Lutheran theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber. She points out how those who were aware of the significance of the birth of Jesus were simple shepherds and “visitors from afar”.
Pope Francis in his Christmas address said that Jesus comes "where human dignity is put to the test. He comes to ennoble the excluded and he first reveals himself to them; not to educated and important people, but to poor working people."
Bolz-Weber writes: “People don’t leave Christianity because they stop believing in the teachings of Jesus.”
How often do we meet people who say, yes they believe but that they have moved away from organised religion? And that’s exactly what she expresses when she writes: “People leave Christianity because they believe in the teachings of Jesus so much, they can’t stomach being part of an institution that claims to be about that and clearly isn’t”.
Those words of Nadia Bolz-Weber resonate powerfully with me. To talk about people moving away from God because they have stopped “practising their faith” has never sat easily with me. Bolz-Weber’s words make great sense. It never makes sense to blame secularisation, the media, the modern world for the fall-off in belief in God. If our words and actions remain true to the Word of God, they will of course transform the lives of people and our lives too.
The power of the word is sensational. We need to be careful with our words. Words must always attempt to speak the truth. I remember teaching Hamlet in secondary school and how Leaving Cert students honed in on the hypocrisy of aspects of the characters in the play. Young people spot spoof, they spot when people say one thing and do another and it enrages them, whereas older people seem to manage it in a less critical manner.
Maybe it is that we all grow lazy in our use of words, turn them into clichés, reciting trite sayings that no longer hold meaning for people.
The Word became flesh and too often our own words are hot air, they never become flesh. It’s easy to talk the talk. We all fall short of what we aspire to be. But that too is part of the mystery of Christmas. Life is messy and so too was the birth of Jesus Christ.
We need to treat words with great care. And those of us who believe in God have a special obligation and indeed privilege to be conscious of the fact that the Word was God.
I was greatly heartened that my psychologist friend was inspired by the words in the editorial in The Irish Times on Christmas Eve. As I was.