Beloved,

This year, as the calendar turns to December 1, we pause with reverence to recognize World AIDS Day, first observed in 1988—now 37 years of global remembrance, advocacy, and hope. We join hands with a world still aching, still fighting, still believing for healing.

We pray for the more than 40 million souls who have died from HIV/AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic. Forty million lives — mothers and sons, artists and scholars, preachers and prophets, neighbors and nations — each one carrying a name, a rhythm, a story, a light. And we pray for the approximately 39 million who are living with HIV today, holding courage in their bodies and hope in their bones.

We pray especially for our siblings in the African diaspora — for the Black and Brown communities across America and the world where the burden has been heaviest.

Because of decades of fear, stigma, inadequate treatment, poor access to healthcare, systemic racism, and under-resourced neighborhoods, HIV/AIDS has struck our community with disproportionate force. The suffering is not accidental; it is the legacy of inequity.

And yet, hear this clearly:

We cast no aspersions, pronounce no judgment, and assign no shame.

We simply stand with every beloved child of God who lives with this affliction and with every family who has walked the long valley of loss. We stand with all who grieve. All who survive. All who hope.

Wherever pain is present, we stand.

Wherever stigma has wounded, we stand.

Wherever access is denied, we stand.

Wherever suffering groans, we stand.

Even as we bow in memory of millions lost to this scourge, we must not forget that in South Africa — the nation with the highest number of people living with HIV in the world, nearly 8 million — the struggle intensifies. 

Early this year, most U.S. aid to South Africa was suspended under a sweeping executive order; that aid once comprised a substantial portion of the country’s HIV-AIDS funding. 

 The result: dozens of clinics shut down, thousands of care-workers lost their jobs, and hundreds of thousands of people suddenly risk losing life-saving access to medication and prevention services. 

 So today, on a global day of remembrance, we stand with South Africa — grieving with those it has lost, and praying that the compassion of the world may not forget their need for healing and hope.”

And we lift our prayer to the God who bends low toward every ache:

And we lift our prayer to the God who bends low toward every ache:

O Healer of Nations, hasten the day when a cure is revealed,

when treatment is universal,

when stigma is shattered,

and when every life — without exception — is held as holy.

Until then, we speak hope.

We practice compassion.

We advocate for justice.

We remember the names.

We honor the living.

We refuse to look away.

This is our charge.

This is our compassion.

This is our Christ.

May our remembrance become action,

and may our action become the healing our world still longs to see.