Word to the Wise
Sunday, March 3, 2019 - 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time - C [Pentecost 2010]
[Sir 27:5-8; 1 Cor 15:54-58; Luke 6:39-45]The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does one's speech disclose the bent of one's mind. Praise no one before he speaks, for it is then that people are tested. [Sirach] "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]
I once gave my father, who was a judge, a wall plaque that had this prayer on it: Lord, let my words today be gracious and tender, because tomorrow I may have to eat them." Jesus' words in the Gospel According to Luke and the first scripture from Sirach both point to the profound connection between what we say and who we are. This is at the root of truth and it is why lying is evil. A lie not only conceals the truth of the subject matter, it tries to conceal the truth about the person speaking. Ironically, the lie does reveal the truth about the speaker - i.e. someone afraid of the truth or else completely amoral - a liar!
Most of us, I would wager, have had times when we said something that we knew was not completely true or else we said something that was true but was spoken out of spite. Gossip is one of the faults I hear most often in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Again, the question is not what the words of gossip reveal about the subject but what it reveals about the speaker! Ultimately our speech becomes a symbol of our integrity. What is our "store of goodness?" What is our "store of evil?" Learning to build up the first and getting rid of the second is the continuing challenge of Jesus' teaching. Praying for words that are gracious and tender will save us from having to eat them. AMEN