Once, when I was very small, my mom washed my mouth out with soap. Those of you who remember more traditional forms of child-rearing will recall this custom. To others, I must explain: she had caught me using a ‘bad word’ and washing mouths with soap was the traditional remedy. I do not remember the word I used, but I sure remember the washing. The taboo we attach to certain words is but a figment of the power that words once enjoyed among people, a power that seems to have diminished as the world grows old.
The ancients believed far more than we do in the power of words: in the names of gods, in magic words, in curses, blessings, and promises. Perhaps this recognition of the power of words lay partly in the fact that there were comparatively few of them then, as when—the first reading relates—you had to wait for a runner to arrive to hear the news. Indeed, even the words we read as scripture once existed only as spoken words (oral tradition) long before they were written down. Much depended then on the truth or falsehood of a very few words. And that’s one reason why the prophets had such importance in the ancient world.
With the advent of writing, then printing, then mass media, and more recently electronic media, we are inundated with words. But the more words we have, it seems, the less sure our grip on the truth. In ways that must be foreign to the ancients, we are at the mercy of words, for while there are always limits to the truth, there is no limit to lies. And with the multiplication of words, the currency of truth is debased, and lies thrive. Which is why, as people of faith, we must turn again and again to the truest words we can find. And the truth of a word depends upon its closeness to the Word.
The second reading today points out that even the words of the prophets were, at best, only partial Truth. And even the words of John, the last of the prophets, were meant only to point to yet another who would be the source of Truth itself. For as the Gospel proclaims, in language of mystery, “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The Gospel today proclaims that, before there was anything, there was the Word of God. And it is only through that Word, the Gospel further attests, that we can even know God. What’s more, it is only through the Word of God that we can know ourselves, for He who came to join Himself with us did so in order for us to join ourselves to Him and find our true selves in Him.
The point my mom made to me 60-odd years ago was very simple: words matter. Words have consequences. Words give birth to actions; they set things in motion. God gives us the power to speak, the power to make words of our own. The words we speak shape our characters; our words have the power to wound or to heal. So, among the many things we recall at Christmas, let us also remember this: to stay close to the Word of God. For the Word that set the Universe in motion, the Word through which God speaks to our hearts and calls us by name, is the same Word God sent to Bethlehem to be born.
Photo of Nativity Scene by Dan Moriarty.