The words from Sirach:

"When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear; so do one’s faults when one speaks” really spoke to me very deeply. I think that many of us let ourselves “off the hook,” so to speak, when it comes to our speech. That said, a friend shared with me a saying 30 years ago that I still use all the time, “Everything before the ‘but' is a lie.” How often do we say, “I’m really not trying to be gossipy BUT …”. And every time I hear someone begin a sentence with: “With all due respect …” I know what is coming next.

Our wagging tongues have the power of revelation. They allow others to see into our very souls, to see what has taken root within us.

The Gospel of Luke tells us:

"A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit."

AND ... from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

What is the remedy or antidote to our wagging tongues?

SILENCE.

True silence is not escape but engagement, not emptiness but fullness, not absence but presence. It is a way of showing up and being present to God, others, myself, life, and the world. Mindful of the psalmists words, “For God alone my soul in silence waits” (PSALM 62:1,6).

Waiting in silence is not necessarily easy or comfortable. The silence strips away busyness, distractions, and entertainment. In silence, you are confronted with yourself; your thoughts, voices, temptations, all that you are and all that you are not.

In this regard, the practice of silence becomes an act of repentance, turning around and going in a different direction. Silence invites me to repent from the need to justify, explain, and defend; from the need to be recognized, heard, and approved of; from the need to be accomplished, efficient, and productive. Silence asks me to learn to gracefully do nothing.

It reveals that I am not self-sufficient. That doesn’t mean that I am deficient but that my sufficiency is not found within myself but in God, the one who created me in His own image and likeness. The Christian tradition holds silence as an essential practice for anyone who wants to grow spiritually. The Prophet Elijah found God in “a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:12). Jesus, the gospel writers tell us, often went off to be by himself, to lonely and deserted places, to pray (Mark 1:35).

Remember what Sirach told us in the first reading:

"When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear; so do one’s faults when one speaks."

Might we have holy integration; where our words reflect the beauty of what is going on within our hearts and souls?

May God bless you all and may your Lenten journeys lead you to a deep and beautiful encounter with Jesus Christ.

Yours in Christ,