Words by William John Fitzgerald

There’s a childhood chant that goes: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me.” Not so!

Positive and energizing words can lift our spirits. In my community, there is a man named Danny who greets everyone each morning as if they were guests: “Good morning, young lady,” or “Good morning, young man!” The octogenarians are blessed with his greetings.

“The Word became flesh.” Words can become flesh! Danny enfleshes peace and joy.  

Words can become actions and take on a life of their own. They can be embedded in the culture of the times—some for good and some for bad. There are thousands of examples, and every decade of human experience produces both derogatory and unusual slang.

For example, the word “swell” was common in the 1930s. Was it what we collectively hoped for after the calamity of the Great Depression? Others words were quirky or unusual—consider “skedaddle,” “flapper,” or “heck.”

It seems the current political climate gives people permission to use hateful words that are usually sharp and wounding, like bullets that pierce and injure.

Before their horrific actions, Hitler and Mussolini poisoned the airwaves with hateful speeches and lies, such as, “Poland is our enemy and will invade Germany.” Now our country has a leader whose stock in trade is lies and ridicule.

But even long before him, our culture has been permeated with slurs and derogatory labels. These slurs are meant to belittle immigrants and people of certain races, such as the term “wop,” an acronym for “without papers.” And hate groups have names like Ku Klux Klan.

Today, some Americans despise the very word “government,” as exemplified by the events on January 6, 2021. This past April, on the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, former President Bill Clinton said that it was wrong to speak of federal employees “like they are dogs.” Such an attitude is what led Timothy McVeigh to violence against a federal building containing 168 men, women, and children in 1995.

Each decade seems to produce its own words. Today, the word “perfect” is often used as an affirmation. Might it be the emergence from a confusing culture that produces words taken from advertising that seem to seek perfection, like the word “absolutely” or the phrase “it is what it is”?

Why not replace sour words with pleasant or positive words, like “splendid,” “beautiful,” “gorgeous,” “delightful,” or “magnificent”? After all, the liturgy invites us to do so: “Lift up your hearts!” It would seem the heart has its own language. Saint-Exupéry expresses this truth so very well in his book The Little Prince: “It is only with the heart that one sees rightly.”

Is our world a cursed world or a blessed world? The daily news may sometimes give the impression that there are more curses than there are blessings. In his seminal work Original Blessing, Matthew Fox indicates that in the evolutionary process we find original blessings contained in the entire evolution story. From the beginning of time, we are surrounded by blessings rather than curses.

The church validates this truth with the countless blessings that appear in her liturgy. However, in Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’, he warns us about the curse we are inflicting on our mother the earth through global warming.

We pray for our mother with a primal blessing of motherhood. Not only is the blessed Virgin Mary a person who is blessed, but so is our blessed earth a treasured mother.

We pray to the Holy Spirit to renew the face of the earth, but by the denial of global warming, we visit upon her a curse. And so we pray, “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love and renew the face of the earth.” ♦

William John Fitzgerald is a long-time contributor to Today’s American Catholic.

Image: Jessica Mangano / Unsplash