punished by the tongue - 1st week tuesday 2014

St. Bede the Venerable, a monk who lived in the 7^th century made an interesting commentary on our gospel today.  In explaining why Jesus silenced the unclean spirit taking possession of the man, St. Bede wrote, “The devil, because he had deceived Eve with his tongue, is punished by the tongue, that he might not speak.”  And so it happened that while Jesus was praised by the people for speaking and teaching with authority, the evil one was punished by being silenced.  One should also see this in the context of Jesus who called himself the way, the truth and the life, in contrast to the devil who is known to be the father of lies.

In our first reading, Eli, the priest, watched Hannah as she was moving her lips without her voice being heard.  Eli thought her drank with wine and accosted her.  But Hannah explained that she was just pouring her heart out in grief to the Lord, praying that the Lord will be merciful to her and grant her, her longed for son.

Today we are reminded of a very powerful tool which we call our tongue, the gift of language, the gift of communication.  May classmate kami anay sa seminaryo nga ginasunlog namon kay man ka law-ay sa iya pero ka guapa sang iya miga. Ang conclusion namon, kanami sia maghablada – he can sweet talk the girl, which he eventually married by the way.  His lack of physical attraction was well compensated by his ability to speak.

I just want us to be aware of this powerful gift which God has given to most of us.  Hannah used it to pour out her heart in prayer, Jesus used it to preach and thus lead all of us to the truth, and the evil one used it to mislead, to deceive and to lie – to remind us that like all beautiful gifts it can be used for the good or abused, it can bring and thus create both good and evil, both benefit and harm.

St. James in his letter admonished us to use wisely our tongue which he refers to a very small part of the body that can do a lot of harm.  The psalms too want us to pray to God that He will make us watchful and conscious of the implications of what we say and how we say things by setting a guard over our mouth – Lord set a guard over my mouth.  Even Pope Francis joined in by admonishing us to avoid gossip.

One of the beautiful things the seminary has taught us even when we were young, in high school, was the time for silence that punctuated our life.  There were certain hours in the day when we are not allowed to talk, times when we were told to keep quiet and appreciate silence.  It might be good also even in your individual schedule to allot a time which you can call your quiet time, allowing yourself to appreciate silence, probably using this as a time for prayer and reflection.  As I told my students in the seminary, there are companies in Japan who impose it as a routine to be observed by their top management to quietly meditate, to spend some time each day for quiet meditation as part of their office work.  They are paid to meditate, they are paid to keep quiet and reflect.  The point is, they are paid for doing it because eventually it pays off to good decisions for the company.

Let us learn to use wisely our tongue – to talk, to speak when we need to, to keep quiet when it is called for, and to appreciate silence in our daily routine.  In the end like Jesus we too should silence the evil spirit by not lending it our voice.