Bishop Hughes reminds us that at this moment, when so much of what we’re hearing in the world is harsh and hard-hearted, the way we speak to others and the way we speak to ourselves can be an incredible gift. (Time: 5:00.)
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark, and it is midway through the third week of Advent, which means in just a few days, on Sunday, we’ll celebrate the fourth Sunday of Advent, and three days later it will be Christmas. So from this Wednesday to next Wednesday, ready or not, it is coming. And all the preparation that needs to happen between now and then, it’ll either get done or it won’t get done.
I think the thing that’s the most important to remember, particularly at this point – at the crunch point where the finish line is almost there and there’s still so much to do – the important thing to remember is the main thing: the gift of Jesus Christ. That God’s very self came here in ways that we still do not fully understand, but that somehow we know, deep in our hearts, we know that God came here as that infant that needed so much and that was so vulnerable, and then gave so much. And God sent God’s self for each and every one of us, for the whole wide world, but also for us as individuals. I think when we can remember the gift that has been given to us as individuals, then it changes things. It changes our focus.
In this season, as we prepare and as we travel and as we bake, all the things that we do, spending time with family and friends, in this season of celebration, and also in this season of generosity, where we want to share what we have with others, I want to encourage you to pay close attention to your words. The way we speak to others and the way we speak to ourselves can be an incredible gift at this particular moment. If you’re hearing things via social media or via news outlets, if you’re hearing the same kinds of things I’m hearing, there’s a harshness to them, a hard-heartedness to them, a judgment to them, an ugliness to them, this kind of pointing at other people, entire groups of people, by any one person or any group of people that otherizes them or dehumanizes them. That harshness has nothing to do with the love of God, it just simply does not. And we can’t help but when we’re met with that harshness, want to return the harshness.
It’s an endless cycle, and it can stop at any point when someone says, I’m going to use my words to be gentle. I’m going to use my words to be caring, to be kind, to uplift, to affirm, to let people know that they are loved by me and that they are loved by God. I’ll take this even further, that we need to use our words to be kind to ourselves, to be affirming to ourselves. I listen to so many people talk about themselves in ways that are so harsh and judgmental that nobody else needs to ever judge them because they cannot forgive themselves.
But I wonder, in these last seven days as we had to head to Christmas, and then the 12 days of Christmas, if we might do something different and be incredibly generous with ourselves, incredibly generous with our friends, with our families, and abundantly generous with God’s people, whose paths we will cross in the next two weeks as we continue to celebrate.
This is a gift. It’s a gift that is not costly in terms of your finances. You don’t have to budget for it that way, but it is a gift that is costly in terms of our awareness that we need to pay attention. We need to pay attention to the words we use and how we use them, and what it is that we want to do when we speak to people and when we speak to ourselves.
There is a way to change all that is going on around us. It means for us to actively participate in being God-like. To actively participate in having a ministry like Jesus’s, where we are constantly talking about God’s love and God’s mercy.
Know that as you prepare and travel and spend time with your family and friends, I am praying that you have the best holidays ever. And I am also praying that each of us, at every opportunity, blesses someone with words that are kind, loving, caring, affirming, and that in doing that, we help God transform the world.
