Loving the Word of God in a world filled with words

Every word we listen to. Every word we speak. Every word we write. Every word of ours, incoming or outgoing, must be in harmony with the Gospel.

Edal Anton Lefterov, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The tongue has the power of life and death.
Proverbs 18:21

The power of words

I don’t think it’s over-dramatic to say that words are like nuclear power. Nuclear power can light an entire city or obliterate that same city. It depends upon the way in which and the care with which that power is used.

Every child knows the line, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Every person over eight years-old knows that’s not true. Words carry tremendous power to draw people closer together or to alienate them. To build people up or to tear them down. To heal or to wound. To give life or to unleash death.

It is essential for Catholics to understand the power of words and the power of love. But most of all, it is essential to understand the power of the Word, the God Who is love.

I want to begin at an odd starting-point, however. There is a series of comedy books for which I have an inordinate affection. It is the series of Jeeves novels by P.G. Wodehouse, an English author of the early-to-middle twentieth century. The stories are about Reginald Jeeves, who is the prototypical fictional super-butler…though, technically, he is a valet…and his master, a young, idle, and dim-witted but winsome minor aristocrat named Bertie Wooster.

Wodehouse was one of the most gifted authors of the twentieth century. And he watched the world torn to pieces around him during two world wars, the Great Depression, and decades of unremitting cultural and moral decay. And what was his response? To what purpose did he dedicate his formidable talents?

Not to wartime propaganda. Not to writing treatises on political theory. Not even to writing serious fiction. At least, not “serious fiction” in the ordinary way we think of that term. Instead, he churned out book after book, telling stories about two insignificant characters doing the most astoundingly trivial things.

But the saving grace of the Jeeves stories is in their language. Wodehouse took his almost painfully inane plots and dialogue and clothed them in the most exquisite, perfect English prose.

Actually, with a little imagination, there are lots of lessons we could glean from the Jeeves novels. They are about chaos and order. About global troubles and domestic tranquility. Even about sin and grace and love.

But the lesson they teach most clearly and emphatically is about the power of words. The power of words to bring characters and stories to life. The power of words to take trivial plots and turn them into noble monuments of human expression and edifying parables about human nature.

Today’s situation

With their mouths the godless destroy their neighbors, but through knowledge the righteous escape.
Proverbs 11:9

“The world today is flooded with words, yet we thirst for truth.” So begins Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron’s 2021 pastoral note on digital communication, The Beauty of Truth. If P.G. Wodehouse lavishes the highest English prose on trivial plots, today’s world floods even the weightiest issues with “trash talk,” to borrow an expression from the sports world.

Today, such words pour forth from media outlets of all kinds, even some purportedly Catholic outlets. Careless words. Antagonistic words. Provocative words. Derogatory words. Manipulative words. And outright lies.

And we face this flood of words every day, from the first time we check our phones in the morning to … well … the last time we check our phones before we go to bed at night. All day long we are bombarded with messages. And most of those messages are trying to manipulate us.

Is it going too far to claim that? Think deeply and critically about the messages you encounter every day. The news alerts on your phone. The ads on your social media. The TV screen at the gas station. The Catholic blog that makes you a little sick with disagreement. Or the one from your side of the ideological spectrum that still feels a bit like a guilty pleasure because of its content, tone, or style.

Think about the increasingly blurry lines between hard news, editorial content, and advertising. Even in the Church, we need to be careful about how we use sophisticated marketing techniques to promote ourselves and our activities.

I am not saying it is all bad. But we need to understand what is happening in the world of media communications. Because it is the world in which we are saturated, all the time.

And that all-the-time-ness is bad. Like all floods since the time of Noah, the current flood of words destroys. It overwhelms us. It makes the world chaotic. Like currency, speech becomes devalued when there is too much of it. People are distracted and manipulated and bewildered.

The Word and our words

Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’
Matthew 5:37

The Catholic theologian Romano Guardini reminds us of the power of words and the urgency of our care for words. He writes:

A word is not merely a sign to convey a meaning. It is a living thing, embodying spirit. In company with other words it makes up language, and language is the room in which man lives. It is the world of mental images from which the light of truth is ever breaking upon him. When a word decays, it is not merely that we become uncertain of each other’s meaning. One of the forms that compose our life has perished. A signpost has become illegible. A light has been extinguished and our intellectual day made darker. To restore to its original meaning a word that is being destroyed by careless use is a service to the whole of human life.

We need to love words. And we need to take care of our words, those we receive and those we speak and type.

We are not alone in this mission. We belong to the Church. And the Catholic Church is the world’s leading expert on words. We need to appropriate her expertise, which is part of our family inheritance as her members.

Our entire existence is rooted in the Word of God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1). From all eternity God speaks His Word, and through Him all things were made. And then God did something even more astounding and joined Himself to His creation: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14).

And becoming flesh, the Word Who is Jesus Christ spoke to us “words of spirit and life” (Jn 6:63), “words of everlasting life” (Jn 6:68). Christ reveals to us the God Who created us, this universe, and everything in it by speaking words of love and power, “Let there be…” light and water and land and animals and man.

By speaking words of life and love, God created us. And by His Word’s death and resurrection, God has redeemed us and given us life.

The deepest truth about our identity, mission, and destiny is the Word of God. He Who is “the way and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6). And Jesus reveals all of this by His deeds and His words.

One of the most important documents of the Second Vatican Council is the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, the Word of God. In this document, the Council Fathers teach that God’s revelation comes to us in the form of words and deeds. Sacred Scripture is the expression in words of the truth about God, about us, and about our relationship with Him.

The sure way to understand the word of God in Scripture is by means of Sacred Tradition. And much of our Tradition is expressed in words: our creeds, the Church’s magisterial documents, and especially the words of the Sacred Liturgy.

So, if the current flood of words destroys, our response is not to reject words and go silent. We need to love words like never before! We need to take care of our words like never before.

Words of love

A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.
Luke 6:45

We need to love words, and we need words of love. We are talking about communication. And the word “communication” has a lot to do with love. It has the same root as “community,” “communal,” and, yes, “Communion.” Each of these words comes from a Sanskrit word, “mu,” which means, “bond” or “link.” These words are all about persons who are bound together. We are bound together because we are first bound to the three divine Persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–sharing in their communion with each other.

The word “religion” comes from the Latin “religare,” which means, “to bind.” True religion binds us to Christ and to each other. And the very act of communicating expresses and reinforces our bond. And what binds us together is love. We are bound together in Christ, the God Who is love (1 Jn 4:8).

We are created and redeemed by the Word of God Who is love. We hear His words and are formed by His words of life and power and love. As humans, we are creatures of speech. As children of God and disciples of Christ, we are commanded to speak: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).

Every word we listen to. Every word we speak. Every word we write. Every word of ours must be a Gospel word. Not every word has to be a quotation from Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. But every word of ours, incoming or outgoing, must be in harmony with the Gospel.

Thinking deeply and carefully about these truths, we discover tremendous freedom and responsibility. Saint Paul says that we are “ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20). Six verses earlier, St. Paul tells us where our greatest freedom and our greatest responsibility resides: “The love of Christ impels us.”

What should we do?

Here are a few practical ways we can respond to the chaos of anti-communication and communicate the love of Christ:

We use non-manipulative speech. We love words and care for them. We speak plainly and truthfully. We rely on facts and not embellishments. We use logic and avoid “dirty tricks” like personal attacks or misrepresenting the arguments of others. We let our “yes” mean “yes” and our “no” mean “no.”

We think critically, not cynically. Critical thinking builds good communication. Cynicism corrodes it. We can’t “trust” in God but radically doubt everything in this world. We need to trust that God is present and active in the world, even as we “test everything” and “retain what is good,” in the words of St. Paul (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

We need silence in order to appreciate speech. Speech and silence go together, like tension and repose in music. Silence is not just rest from speech. Speech and silence enliven each other. We need to carve out times of silence every day.

We need to engage in intense discipleship. I have a men’s group that the men named WHATL, “Walk Hard After The Lord.” The acronym is funny but the name is serious. When we take a lazy stroll, we can easily be distracted. When we “walk hard,” we are far less prone to distraction. We tend to focus, paying attention to and talking about only what is essential.

Lastly, we need to know and to share the power of Christ’s love in a world that sometimes seems only to know how to fight or ignore each other.

The power of love

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.
1 Corinthians 13:1

What is “the power of love”? It turns out that neither Huey Lewis nor Celine Dion have said the definitive word about this question. Our Catholic Faith tells us exactly what real love is, where it comes from, how we receive it, and how we share it. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas á Kempis tells us about the power of Christ’s love:

Love is an excellent thing, a very great blessing, indeed. It makes every difficulty easy, and bears all wrongs with equanimity. For it bears a burden without being weighted and renders sweet all that is bitter. The noble love of Jesus spurs to great deeds and excites longing for that which is more perfect. Love tends upward; it will not be held down by anything low. Love wishes to be free and estranged from all worldly affections, lest its inward sight be obstructed, lest it be entangled in any temporal interest and overcome by adversity.

Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger or higher or wider; nothing is more pleasant, nothing fuller, and nothing better in heaven or on earth, for love is born of God and cannot rest except in God, Who is above all created things.

One who is in love flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free, not bound. He gives all for all and possesses all in all, because he rests in the one sovereign Good, Who is above all things, and from Whom every good flows and proceeds. He does not look to the gift but turns himself above all gifts to the Giver.

Love often knows no limits but overflows all bounds. Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of troubles, attempts more than it is able, and does not plead impossibility, because it believes that it may and can do all things. For this reason, it is able to do all, performing and effecting much where he who does not love fails and falls.
Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book III, Chapter Five

May the love of Christ be ever in our ears and on our lips. May it inform our media choices and animate our typing fingers. May it fill our hearts and bind us to Him and to each other. May we know His love here on earth and make it known, so that together in heaven we may all behold face-to-face Him Whom the poet Dante calls, “the love that moves the sun and other stars.”