Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time – 8 March 2025

This First Reading is taken from what is called the Wisdom Literature. Wisdom, in Hebrew and early Christian thought, was a very concrete virtue. It didn’t have much to do with lofty and abstract thought. Wisdom, rather, was a matter of acting rightly, prudently, paying careful attention to the rightness of even the smallest details of day to day life. For the Scriptural authors of both Testaments, all of that was especially true when day to day details at issue were words.

In the Hebrew and early Christian view of reality, words had a value, a power, almost a life of their own. A person’s word, once spoken, in a way became almost something of an image, a representation of that person. Something of a relationship could be established with a person’s words, almost in the way it could be established with that person. So, to give to someone else your word, to speak to them, was to give them something of yourself to establish a personal bond with them. That was most clearly so when the word that was given was someone’s name or title. The name was person. Understanding that gives tremendous weight to what is a revelation of the love God has for his people that is utterly unique to the Hebrew Christian tradition. God chooses to give his name, his titles, to us and invites us to use them when we address him.

It is certainly true of our culture that we are constantly surrounded by words. From the people around us, from the TV, the radio, the newspapers, our phones, at work, at endless meetings and gatherings of all sorts, even in Church. How much of what you hear actually gives you a dependable insight into the nature of the speaker, what he or she is really like? How much of what you hear do you suspect is really very carefully constructed to protect an image of the speaker, whether it is true or not?

We need to regain something at least of Sirach’s insight into the power and the sacredness of the commonplace, even just of words. Can love that is never expressed be love? Can I truly claim to have respect for someone of whom I regularly speak with disrespect? How frequently, carelessly do I use the most damaging words of all … labels? Racial labels, gender labels, social labels. Do I ever actually say things like, “Blacks are …, or whites are …, or men are …, or women are …” and then add anything at all? It is damaging stuff, and it is simply never true.

Do I really want to be the kind of person my own words reflect? If I don’t, then I had better change how I express and reveal myself. Because, inevitably, what I reveal is what I will be.

Fr Andrew