EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2025)
Readings:
Sirach 7:4-7
Psalms 92:2-3, 13-16
1 Corinthians 15:54-58
Luke 6:39-45
There is a good deal of timely wisdom in today’s liturgy – the reality is that most people will not follow it, even those who call themselves Christian. But it’s not as though the Christian tradition has a monopoly on what is right and just! Some one-hundred years before Jesus, Sirach shared many gems of wisdom, including the four verses which constitute our first reading: “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.” If only Sirach was around to hear some of the banter that is being tossed around as ‘intelligent’ speech? I am not sure that some of it could pass the “good fruit” test. Indeed, as good fruit is meant to be picked, eaten, and enjoyed, so too are words meant to be carefully chosen, measured and truthful, and then followed. Sirach is correct that “one’s speech discloses the bent of one’s mind,” but even more importantly they are meant to disclose a mirror image of one’s heart, where true feelings reside. As Sirach reminds us, there is a real danger in heaping praise on a person who has not spoken enough to reveal what is truly in his or her heart. We had an expression: “I used to think you looked stupid, but once you began to speak I realized you are stupid!”
The responsorial psalm echoes last week’s psalm – bushes, palm trees, cedars, planted by good soil, by streams of living water, “shall flourish in the courts of our God.” Even though we might rather think differently, it points to our upbringing, our education, for it is those moments which precede making those words our own, for better or for worse. We draw on all that is around us – our parents, our teachers, our friends, our books, our newspapers, and the shows we watch on television – for when we make those words are own, should we choose to do so, they will demonstrate our true character, they will show “the bent of one’s mind.”
In the gospels, Jesus’ words are meant to be seen as different, for He taught with “authority,” the gospels tell us. Jesus knew the important connection between His words and who the people thought Him to be. Even more importantly in the gospels, is the negative example of the Scribes and Pharisees, who can recite all the words of the Law with their lips, but their hearts are empty. The religious leaders of the day were the cause of Jesus uttering some of His most striking and harsh words in the gospels. The religious of Jesus’ day are “hypocrites,” who judge the world from their exalted status and find most of it wanting. As Jesus states in today’s gospel: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.”
We have all met people who, we might say, “are set in their ways.” There is little or no visible growth happening in their lives; what they think is what they think, and it’s never going to change. So do we think that Jesus was just wasting His breath on the religious leaders of His day, or did Jesus hold out hope that genuine change is possible? I firmly believe in the latter (with some notable exceptions). We are meant to be like the ‘fruit of the tree,” mentioned in the first and third readings. The growing of fruit (or vegetables) is a fairly long process. As it matures on the tree or on the vine, it developes into something that is sweet, and juicy, and tasty, all depending (as Sirach says) “on the care it has had.” It takes time for us to produce good fruit. It takes a certain kind of openness which shields our hearts from what is bad, and allows what is good to take up space in our hearts. In other words, it is a process towards which we strive on a daily basis. Jesus speaks in beautiful imagery at the end of today’s gospel selection after He points out that a rotten tree cannot produce good fruit: “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.”
It is difficult in our day and age to not become set in our ways. Our minds and our hearts are bombarded by thoughts which are contrary to what Jesus has taught us. Decisions are made in the public sphere which Jesus would most assuredly say are not in keeping with the gospel of love. The lives of those who choose to follow in Jesus’ footsteps should, to the very best of our ability, have no hint of hypocrisy. A hypocrite says one thing and does another. It’s easy to mutter the ‘right’ words and give an impression of being a spiritual person, but the proof is in the pudding. Eventually we are going to have to act on what our lips speak. A truly spiritual person has an internal moral compass that overflows into external definite actions. Such a person will not complain about ”the splinter in a brother or sister’s eye” while doing nothing “about the beam in his or her own eye.” We are called to address the larger issues in our own hearts before we seek to address the small issues in the lives of our brothers and sister in Christ. And if we speak and act from the overflow of our hearts, our love will not only overflow to our brothers and sister in Christ, it will overflow to an entire world who needs our love, compassion, and even our assistance.
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