Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
How do we evaluate a person? Often enough we begin with looking at outward appearance, considering how a person presents himself, how he is dressed, what kind of car he drives. If someone with disheveled hair and wearing scruffy clothes was juxtaposed next to someone in an expensive suit who just got out of the driver’s seat of an expensive car, many people would have a whole set of distinctions to draw about the two men. Often on these first appearances, we consciously or unconsciously make decisions on who to avoid and whose friendship we might seek. Yet, Sirach and Our Lord offer a crucial criterion to be considered before such decisions: what heart does the person’s words betray?
“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 27:6-7) How often we dismiss good words, simply because they come from someone we are otherwise inclined to avoid. This is how many treated the scruffy prophets and St. John the Baptist. Or how often we may overlook a person’s disparaging or derogatory speech because of the misguided thought that what social or economic benefits their favor has to offer outweigh the moral damage their company may be doing to our soul. How often such habits of evaluation can then numb us to a proper weighing of our own words and the need to examine our speech and the heart that our tongues reveal.
This week, let us listen to the words of God to us, which speak from the fullness of God’s heart! Let us hear the good call to examine our hearts. Let us listen to what God has to say to us that will help us remove the beams from our eyes, and allow God’s word to shape our own words, allow God’s heart to shape anew our own heart. Let us pray for the grace of open ears this week, so that we may honestly evaluate the relationships in our lives, and choose to invest more time with those who out of the store of goodness in their hearts produce good. (Luke 6:45)