Thursday, December 25, 2025
Preaching by Sister Lorraine Réaume, OP
Isaiah 52:7-10
Hebrews 1:1-6
John 1:1-18

As many of you know, the Congregation placed billboards around our county this summer with three words: "Love is Kind," from 1 Corinthians. We wanted to put positive and encouraging words out into the world as a counterbalance to so many divisive and cruel words we are hearing.

At this year’s city display of hundreds of themed Christmas trees, we continued the "Love is Kind" theme with our Adrian Dominican Tree. A number of Sisters here made hand-designed ornaments with more encouraging words. The tree also offers passers-by little “Kind bars” to take and eat.

Someone even made a front license plate with the "Love is Kind" design and gave them to a few of us. I don’t have the attachment that enables me to put it on the front of the car I drive, but I intended to get one. Yet something made me hesitate. I am embarrassed to admit this, but I thought, “If I have those words on my car, I’d better be really mindful of being kind wherever I go, and of driving kindly.” I would need to be sure to enflesh the words.

Because words matter. Words matter. Words shape our reality. Words are meant to be true.

As Dominicans, as people of the Word, as Gospel women whose identity is to preach good news, what we say and do matters.

Wonderful Dominican preacher and teacher Ann Garrido says we have experienced a year in which "words have been gravely abused.” She says that “the abuse of language is moral in nature. It violates what John has proclaimed [in today’s Gospel]. Our God has chosen to come among us as ‘Word.’"¹

I recently came across a powerful example of using words toward God’s purposes. One of our Associates sent me a video – it was of 24 different Lutheran pastors in Minnesota speaking out in support of their Somali neighbors who we know have been targeted. They repeat, “no one is garbage,” “every neighbor is beloved.” Just like Isaiah in our first reading, one says, “God gives us the boldness to proclaim from the mountain tops: every human being is God’s beloved.” They speak of their strong experience of community and say they want “to protect the miracle of people living in peace.”²

Words can destroy and words can build up. The true Word, emanating from before the beginning of time sustains all things, holds the cosmos, comes from the bosom of the divine creator bringing life and love.

And just to help us get it, to help us understand the message, that Word took on human flesh and dwelt among us, showing what it is to live as a human being with grace, with truth, with love. That Word was Jesus.

Scripture Scholar Donald Senior, CP, tells us that John "...reaches back into the vastness of the universe before creation and time began, into the very life of God, and there finds the ultimate origin of Jesus (Jn 1:1-18). The 'word' spoken by God, a word that perfectly expresses God’s love, arches into time and creation and takes flesh. Jesus’ life and ministry began in the timeless love of God for the world.” ³

That Word, that cosmic Christ, still reverberates with love for all, still invites us into deep communion with all creation, still calls us to generosity, to love, and to be and speak words that are true, are healing, words that make for peace, words that are kind.

This day, when we celebrate that the eternal Word took on human flesh and dwelt among us, take some time to think about what words you are being invited to enflesh for yourself, for all those around you, and for our world.

May the Word be with you.

Merry Christmas!

 

---

¹https://discerningdeacons.org/es/possibilities-for-christmas-preaching/

²In Support of Somali Neighbors on Vimeo

³Senior, Donald. Jesus: A Gospel Portrait (New York: Paulist Press, 1992, p.27)