Homily for 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
8th Sunday of Ordinary Time

March 2, 2025
Luke 6: 39-45
Sir 27: 4-7
The Fountains, Tuckahoe, N.Y.
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

“From the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks’” (Luke 6: 45).

One of the many sayings attributed to Abraham Lincoln is, “It’s better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”  Our words tell a lot about us.  The wise author of the Book of Sirach says, “One’s speech discloses the bent of his mind” (27:6).  We reveal what we’re thinking—or at least that’s what speech is meant to do; it’s not meant for lying and deception.

Our words may benefit others.  We can share learning, wisdom, and encouragement.  We can voice compassion and concern.  “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good” (Luke 6:45).  That’s one reason why God gives us the power of speech.

Another reason is praise.  The psalmist sings, “It’s good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praise to your name, Most High, to proclaim your kindness at dawn and your faithfulness thruout the nite” (92:2-3).  God has given us life, health, freedom, forgiveness of our sins, the friendship of his Son Jesus, the protection and help of Jesus’ mother and the saints.  With our voices, then, as well as our actions, we thank him for his goodness, we praise him, and we ask him to continue his blessings.

We use our voices also to praise, thank, and commend others.  With our words we express friendship and love for family and others, such as neighbors, co-workers, and students.  God gives us tongues to help us do good.

It’s awful, then, that we also use our tongues for evil.  Sirach says today that “one’s faults appear when one speaks” (27:4).  We criticize, blame, find fault, and abuse people.  We lie.  We gossip—Pope Francis has spoken many times about the harm that gossip does to people’s reputations and to relationships within families and acquaintances.

Perhaps the strongest words in the Bible on this topic come from St. James in ch. 3 of his letter:  “If anyone doesn’t fall short in speech, he’s perfect, able to bridle his whole body also.  The tongue is a small member [of the body] yet has great pretensions.  It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire.  It’s a restless evil, full of deadly poison.  With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings who are made in the likeness of God” (3:2,5,6,8-9).

Wow!  Sirach’s wisdom is tame in contrast to that.  So is Jesus when he states that one’s mouth reveals “the fullness of the heart.”

There may be no fault, no sin, we’re more likely to fall into—even leap into—than the sins we commit in our speech.  In that context, I’m a little amazed that some people think their hands are unworthy vessels for receiving the Holy Eucharist and insist on receiving our Lord on their tongues.  Are our tongues really worthier than our hands?  For most people, I think not.  (It is true that there are sins that we can commit with our hands, which I won’t enumerate.  But in general, which part of us is more inclined toward sin?)

On Wednesday, we’ll begin Lent, the season of repentance and reform of our spiritual lives, the renewal or renovation of our relationships with God and with the children of God.  It might be a good practice for us to consider how we use the power of speech, to review what our “speech discloses about the bent of our minds” and the content of our hearts.  It would be a real penance to work, with God’s help, to tame our tongues, to use them for good and not for evil.