The homily at Mass this morning offered a serious challenge. Father described our greatest passion as the desire to speak. When I think of "passion" I have rarely thought about speaking with the tongue. We speak in other ways with our body, hence the term body language, but how many equate passion with speech? I daresay few.
In today's gospel we see Jesus open the tongue of the mute and then tell everyone to be silent about what He did. A contradiction? Not really. Do you remember the film about the Carthusians, Into Great Silence released about a decade ago? Was it inspired by the 1948 book, They Speak by Silences? I don't know but it seems possible. And remember that it is primarily in the silence that God speaks. That's why I took Cardinal Sarah's book, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise on the last Ignatian Retreat I made with Fr. James Buckley in 2022. Reading a book on silence during a silent retreat was a blessing.
In The Screwtape Letters, the devil tells his nephew, Wormwood, they want to make the world all noise. He becomes so worked up as he writes that he turns into a centipede. Think about that image. Our noisy world works a transformation. It often takes reasonable people, made in the image and likeness of God, and transforms them, an ugly transformation indeed.
Listening to the speech of Satan, Adam and Eve were transformed from perfect human persons with amazing preternatural gifts into sinful enemies of God. They had to wait thousands of years for Jesus, through His passion and death, to transform them once again by grace and welcome them back into the friendship of God.
Every Sunday is an opportunity to enter "into great silence." It begins with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. One of the reasons I love the low Mass is its gift of silence. The high Mass is beautiful and majestic, a great offering to God, but there's little silence. And so we choose the low Mass most of the time.
I suspect that the 8th Commandment is the one most frequently violated. The challenge begins with the age of reason when children often persecute one another with name-calling and backbiting. When I taught fourth grade I almost always had one of the girls come in from recess crying over the treatment of her peers. I always comforted and reminded the current victim how things changed from day to day and urged her to never treat others the way she was treated that day. Kindness is contageous.
How will I use my tongue today? Will I just hold it and spend the day in silent prayer and reading? Will I call someone I suspect is lonely and may need to hear a friendly voice? Will I write a letter which is simply written speech? Will I play a game and laugh with my husband? God forbid I use it to make a bad situation worse or hurt someone.
One of the things Father specifically warned against was passing on the mean things people say about others. That reminded me of a resolution I made decades ago to never repeat to anyone something negative someone said about them. My other resolution was to tell everyone the positive things people said about them. Now, if I can just expand that resolution into not complaining about the mean ways I'm sometimes treated, I will be happy with myself indeed. It's a lifelong challenge.
May God give us all control over the powerful little rudder of the tongue so that we can steer ourselves into the safe harbor of God's holy city. Let us ask Mary who pondered things in her heart and said little in Scripture and dear St. Joseph who has no words recorded. May they be our examples.
May Jesus Christ be praised!
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