the law of kindness is in the mouth€¦ · and lift all you’ve been giving. speaking of loving...

020518_The Law of Kindness is in the Mouth

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THE LAW OF KINDNESS IS IN THE MOUTH

FEBRUARY 5, 2018

I pray that today, as always, I’m going to be able to love and lift you a little bit so that you can love

and lift all you’ve been giving. Speaking of loving and lifting, I’d like to publicly thank my newest

Friends of the Show today: Lucille, Jill, and Roxanne. Thank you for loving and lifting me.

We’re in our Fruit of the Spirit series, and today we are going to talk about kindness, which is

somewhat of a mushy word. Kind, nice, it just has this very generalized use, if we use it at all. It just

seems very mushy. The Catholic Dictionary and The Catholic Encylopedia define it this way: “God’s

loyal love and favor toward his people, and his determination to keep his promises despite the

disloyalty of his people.” In the Bible in 1 Corinthians 13:4 it says that “charity suffers long and is

kind.” Love (The word charity is another word for love. It comes from that Greek root charis.) suffers

long and is patient, as we learned last week, and is kind. We’re going to look at what kindness is

today. I hope you don’t stone me today when this is over with because this took us a turn that I really

didn’t expect at all as I was preparing for the show.

We’re going to find out what kindness is in sort of a backward way by looking at what it isn’t. It

resembles long suffering or patience because we act kindly and patiently by suffering things that are

difficult and ugly and ungracious. Patience is passive and self-contained. If we’re impatient it’s not

self-contained but to be patient is to be self-controlled and self-contained. Kindness is active. It’s a

busy virtue. Kindness comes from a humble and tender spirit. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that it

“stoops to the lowest need, thinking nothing too small in which it may help, ready give back blessing

for cursing; benefit for harm and wrong.” It also says that “kindness is the thoughtful insight, the

delicate tact, the gentle ministering hand of charity.” I like that because you can really see the more

we unpack this 9-fold fruit of the spirit you can see how interconnected they all are. Again, that’s why

we call it the fruit of the spirit and not fruits. Each of these things is so interconnected to the one

before and the one after. Charity or love -- this sacrificial love that God has, this divine love that we

don’t have for anyone unless we have God – kindness and patience proceed from it. Patience, or loving

kindness as we sometimes see it translated depending on your version of the Bible, shows up all over

the place in the Old Testament, usually when it speaks of people interacting with one another. It is

one part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and it is a quality of understanding, sympathy, and even

concern for those who are in trouble or need.

The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it in 3 ways, or at least it says that it is shown in 3 ways. The first is

generosity of conduct, which simplified means love or charity. We’ve already looked at charity in

depth in our second show on the fruit of the spirit, so we’re not going to look at that as much. It’s also

shown by forgiveness of injuries, which we looked at last week when we saw patience and how

patience is called long-suffering in the scriptures because we suffer for a long time in a likeness of God

who suffers with us in order to give us repentance. The forgiveness of an injury, then, is a way of

showing kindness. The third thing kind of took me by surprise, though we know this on kind of an

intuitive level. The third thing is affability of speech. When we think of kindness, this is what I mean

by mushy. When I think of someone who is kind this is what I think of: somebody who says or does nice

things. To me, on the surface of it kindness just seems sort of meh, maybe. But once we get to this

part, this affability of speech, I find something very interesting. This is the turn that my preparation


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too that I wasn’t expecting. When I looked up kindness in a concordance to see how the Bible uses the

word, something just about jumped out from the page and slapped me upside the head: Proverbs

31:36, which says “She opens her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness.” I don’t

know about you but I had never even heard that phrase “law of kindness.” The title of the show, then,

is “The Law of Kindness is in the Mouth” because that Proverbs says here. “In the tongue is the law of

kindness.”

That goes back to this affability of speech idea, one of the 3 ways that we show kindness according to

the Catholic Encyclopedia. We are going to look, then, at this law of kindness that is in the tongue.

We are going to look at sins of speech. As I said, I surely hope you don’t stone me after this. God

places very strong emphases on the sins of speech. Two of the 10 commandments actually refer to sins

of the tongue: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, and You shall not bear false

witness, or you shall not lie. Of the 7 things in Proverbs 6 that it says God hates, 3 of them have to do

with the tongue: a lying tongue, a false witness that bears lies, and he who sows discord among the

brethren. Brethren in this context in Proverbs would have been family because everybody in that area

was related to one another. For us, then, brethren would mean brothers and sisters in the church, our

Christian brothers and sisters, whether in your parish or another parish or another political party,

another state, another personality and temperament, another ministry, whatever it is. Sowing discord

is one of those things that God says he hates, and we do that with our mouths.

I read in my preparation about this story. This woman went to confession and confessed the sin of

gossip. For her penance the priest told her that she needed to go to the top of the hill nearby the

church and take a pillow and cut it open. Then he told her she was supposed to take all the feathers

and shake them into the wind. After she had done that, she had to go and collect every single last

feather from wherever it had blown away, and only then would her penance for gossip would be

completed. You can see that metaphor, then, every time we speak a word against another person.

You can never hope to get back all of the places and information that has been carried from that. The

opposite of a sin of the tongue would be silence. We’re going to concentrate in this show on speech,

on what we choose to say and when we choose to say it. The reason I went this way was not just

because of Proverbs, it was also because of the reference next to that verse in Proverbs where it said

that the law of kindness is in the tongue was to James 3. I’m going to read this whole section in its

“Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged

with greater strictness. For we all make many mistakes, and if any one makes no mistakes in what he

says he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also. If we put bits into the mouths of horses

that they may obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Look at the ships also; though they are so great

and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot

directs. So the tongue is a little member and boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by

a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, staining

the whole body, setting on fire the cycle of nature, and set on fire by hell.”

He says that our tongue, badly used, is set on fire by hell, that it is inspired by demons!

“For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by

humankind, but no human being can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we

bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the likeness of God. From the

same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brethren, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth

from the same opening fresh water and brackish? Can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a

grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.”


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He uses that fruit metaphor we’ve been talking about. A tree is known by the fruit it bears. I love St.

James partly because he is very direct. He pulls no punches here when he’s talking about the tongue

and what a terrible instrument it is for disunity and discord, especially among the Christian brothers

and sisters and among family. We know that is true. He also says that if you can tame your tongue,

Dear One, you can control your entire body and being.

We looked at 3 ways we can show kindness: generosity of conduct or loving each other, not in that

saccharine sweet way but in a “doing” love, a sacrificial love in the best interest of the other person;

to forgive an injury, which we saw was patience according to our study of it last week; affability of

speech according to the Catholic Encyclopedia. We’re looking at this law of kindness that Proverbs say

is in the tongue. As I mentioned, the reference in Proverbs 31 in my Bible was to James, where he

talks about the untamable tongue and the moral contradictions in a reckless talker. Some of this is

going to have to do with your own personality and temperament. Maybe you are a naturally quiet and

shy person and you don’t say a whole lot anyway. Otherwise you may be one of those people who likes

to talk and chat, maybe you’re a sanguine personality kind of person and like interactions with other

people and you feel most comfortable when you’re with other people. Usually those people are fun.

They’re fun to be around and get along with because they’re party people and they like to have a good

time, so they talk a lot. It doesn’t really matter, because what we’re getting at isn’t just the

outwardness of each of these virtues and each of the parts of the fruit of the spirit. We looking

outward and inward. Jesus always directed us away from a simple observance on the outside to an

observance on the inside as well. We have to start with the outward behavior because that’s how we

are. James says that if we can get control of our mouths and tongues then everything else will follow

suit. It’s that difficult. Why not just start with it?

I found this fascinating for so many reasons. He is so blunt when he talks about where this kind of sins

of speech or sins of the mouth come from. In 3:6 he says that it comes from hell. It comes from the

enemy. The enemy is the one who stirs up the desire to sin in ways of speech because they can’t be

retracted, as we saw in that metaphor with the pillow and feathers. St. James is doing a couple of

things here: He’s showing this moral chaos that people fall into when they fail to control their

tongues, and he shows how hypocritical it is for us to hope that our worship or our Christianity or

Catholicity or whatever is acceptable to God. What we are doing is allowing ourselves to be a tool of

Satan against other people for disunity in the church and our families and our relationships and in all

those ways. We can’t expect to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit in kindness and offer pure sacrifices if

we are, as St. James says, the spring that should be bearing fresh water but instead is bearing salt

water or vice versa. He gives a couple of examples of how the tree shows the fruit. In the very

beginning of the book, James starts to look at people who would excuse themselves for their lack of

good works. James is one of the books that Martin Luther wanted to remove from the scriptures

because it talks about works as being necessary for salvation. He specifically says to those people who

might excuse themselves for their lack of works and instead point out the correctness of their faith,

such faith is completely dead. He says that kind of faith is incapable of saving us from condemnation.

If we think that we’re religious but we can’t control our tongue, he says, then our religion is in vain

and he explains why. He talks about how our worship, then, is a mockery and a contradiction. We

can’t curse our neighbor and then bless God. If we do that -- and we all do it sometimes. I’m not

saying we’re perfect. We all fall into it – even if we don’t do it outwardly but inwardly, it’s like saying

I profess respect for the king or president but I insult the President’s family, I throw mud at the family

portraits, and I blatantly disregard his wishes. Basically what James is saying is this is double

mindedness, it’s impurity. To say something ugly about a fellow Christian and then try to worship God


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is double-minded. It’s impure. We can’t bless the Lord and Father and then curse men who are made

in the likeness of God.

Sirach actually points out that if you blow the spark it will burn, if you spit on it it will be quenched,

but both of these come out of the mouth. Isn’t that interesting? I love that. James probably had that

passage in mind because he is showing us this moral contradiction goes way further than even out of

that. He says that out of the same mouth comes forth blessing and cursing. He goes further than just

saying if you blow or spit that comes out of the mouth. He’s saying blessing and cursing come out of

the same mouth, and it shouldn’t be so, is what St. James says.

In preparing for the show I remembered this little nursery rhyme that I had heard: “A wise old owl

lives in an oak, the more he saw the less he spoke. The less he spoke the more he heard. Why can’t

we be like that old bird?” St. Augustine says that no one is able of himself to govern his tongue. We

must fly to the Lord for his assistance. It’s an unquiet evil that cannot be stopped, he says. James

says again “Can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives or a grapevine figs? No more can saltwater yield

fresh.” Again, a tree is known by its fruit as Jesus said in Matthew 12. Either make the tree good and

its fruit good or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. The tree is known by its fruit. “You brood of

vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth

speaks.” That is so convicting, Dear One. What is in your heart comes out of your mouth. The ugliness

that you say to other people, or that you think inside of yourself, comes out. That is from the heart.

It comes from the heart. The good man, Jesus says, out of his good treasure brings forth good and the

evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment men will render

account for every careless word they utter.” OH MY GOSH, that’s terrifying. “For by your words you

will be justified and by your words you will be condemned.” That’s why he tells us not to judge. With

the measure that we judge we will be judged, he says. Every single word that we utter? How many

times do we just sit around and visit and gab and tell jokes and it’s just idleness, and some of it is ugly

idleness.

There is a common contradiction – Jesus points it out and so does James – among church people to

think themselves especially religious. We claim to love God but we’re denouncing everybody who

differs from us, especially other Christians. There are those Catholics who are more Catholic than the

Pope. First of all, God loves differentness. If you look at a zoo you can see very plainly that God likes

variety. He loves our differences. A lot of our differences are just a matter of personality and

temperament, and maybe upbringing, education, woundedness, lot of other things figure in to what

makes another person’s opinion or view of things different from our own. To slander or gossip or

criticize, James says we are fooling ourselves. We are not the Christians we think we are. This is a

huge problem. James points out that the tongue causes a huge forest fire, and we know that it’s true.

Once you’ve said it you can’t bring it back unless you go directly and repent publicly of what you’ve

said or try to bring it back. Even then, you can’t pick up all the feathers. That’s what I loved about

that metaphor with the pillow and casting the feathers to the wind. You can’t get them all back.

They’re gone and you don’t even know how far the feathers have flown. In Romans St. Paul says they

have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge. We think we’re so religious, we might go to mass

every single day. We know these people. We go to church with them, we sit beside them in the pews,

we are these people. We go to mass every day, we give alms, we fast, we pray, we do our scripture

study, we’re doing LoveTheWord™ on a daily basis but we’re the nastiest people anybody knows.

We’ve got nothing nice to say to anybody. We criticize everything. Nothing satisfies us. We have ugly

things to say about absolutely everything. We might have a zeal for God but it’s not according to

knowledge, according to the Scriptures, because being ignorant of God’s righteousness and seeking to


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establish our own in the things we say we do not subject ourselves to the righteousness of God, St. Paul

says in Romans 10:2-3. As James points out, we can do all the right things and still be very, very wrong

on the inside in our relationship with God. Our mouth will show better than anything where we really

show. I’m just doing it because the Holy Spirit led us here!

We’re seeing that the law of kindness is in the tongue, as we’ve seen in Proverbs, Romans, James, and

Ephesians. We’re looking at the ways we do not display the fruit of the spirit in kindness in our speech.

In the situations where we get critical or gossipy or whatever, we see something happen and we are

just absolutely sure it’s evil and something God hates, or maybe we know it for sure to be – we’ve

broken the 10 Commandments or something – but we’re sure that the person is responsible for it, we’re

sure that denouncing them is going to do some good, we’re sure that this is the proper time to point it

out, and we’re sure that we’re the right person to say it, so we vomit it out. Popping off, Dear One, is

not kind. It is not Christian and it is not godly. A Christian’s mouth has been consecrated to God, to

the praise of him and Lord and Father; not slander, not gossip, not critical speech or critical spirit. A

lot of times we might say “Well I’m just letting you know about so-and-so so you can pray for them.”

That is a veiled way of gossiping. You know it and I know it. That one-liner might be true but it’s a

play for attention. It’s a play for the attention you get in being the bearer of the news. It can also be

an opportunity to elevate yourself because we’re more blind to our own faults but we point them out

in everyone else.

Pope Francis cautions against that when he says, “Those who live judging their neighbors, speaking

badly of them, are hypocrites because they don’t have the strength or the courage to look at their own

defects.” Ouch. What should we do when somebody starts to gossip? The saints tell us very plainly.

“If something uncharitable is said in your presence either speak in favor of that person who is absent or

withdraw if possible and stop the conversation”, according to St. John Vianney. St. Francis DeSales

says “If you hear ill of anyone, refute the accusation if you can in justice do so. If not, apologize for

the accused on account of his intentions and so gently check the conversation. If you can, mention

something else favorable to the accused.”

The opposite of the goodness in our speech, uplifting other people, is to backbite. These are ways that

we backbite our neighbor. When we get carried away by vanity and we impute something against our

neighbor that never happened; when we add to what did happen, some sort of imaginary circumstance

that is either an outright lie or at least a detraction; when we bring a hidden or unknown fault to light

– we might say what’s true although we shouldn’t say it – that’s backbiting. It’s not necessarily that

you’re saying something untrue but you’re wounding your neighbors reputation. This is very common

among all of us, especially among Christians, because we have very careful ways in which we can say

very ugly things. Even if the thing you are going to say is true, if it is going to harm your neighbor you

just shouldn’t say it. That’s because even though he may have done the wrong thing and he and God

have to deal with that, he hasn’t lost his reputation before other people. You can’t weaken or destroy

someone else’s reputation with your tongue or your mouth. If the sin that you are revealing – even if it

is not a secret or is known to a few people – is not public knowledge then you are backbiting if you

reveal it to someone else who didn’t know it. That’s because you’re harming your neighbor by doing

so.

Another way is when we exaggerate a fault, whether it’s true or false. This is what we fall into when

we talk about other people’s faults and vices. A fourth way is when we talk about something that

another person has done and they didn’t do it for a bad reason but we offer that they may have done it

for a bad reason. “He did that, but not because he was thinking about God. He’s not so godly as that.


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He did it because he wanted other people to see him.” You can detract from another person with your

gestures. Maybe you don’t say anything but you raise your eyebrow or you shake your head or you turn

your eyes so that other people understand that you’re making a point about that other person. I do

this sometimes by rolling my eyes. I look at someone else and roll my eyes behind the person’s back.

There are lots and lots of ways to contribute to backbiting. Another way that is listed is if you are

publicly blamed for something and you deny you’re guilt even though you are guilty. That is

considered backbiting because you basically are saying that your accuser is a liar although he is telling

the truth. You can see there are hundreds of ways to get in trouble with this!

The reason that we’re nitpicking on it is that God has attached this enormous ball to the chain of our

speech and the necessity of it being godly speech. The obligation is of restoring the neighbor’s

reputation when we have detracted from it. St. Augustine has said that if there is no restoration there

is no pardon. It is a common principle among theologians that restoring your neighbor’s reputation is

an obligation, not only for those who have revealed an imaginary crime but those who have revealed a

true crime if it was secret. You’re held to giving that person at least an equivalent compensation and

you owe that compensation to whatever the detriment was to that person’s reputation but also to

make up for whatever harm was done. You have to repair all the harm, and you have to do it even if

what you have revealed is true if it was secret. Since the thing is true, you’re held to tell everyone

who heard it not that you were lying but that you were backbiting by telling it. That’s according to St.

Augustine and St. Thomas Acquinas “Summa Theologica” in Part 2, section 2, article 62. If you want to

go look at that I’ll add it to the notes.

What are you supposed to do then? We listen and we hold our words when they want to fly out. As long

as you keep them in you can subject your words to your thoughts, your reason, and your logic, but once

they’re out you can’t get them back. They go and go on endless journeys that we can’t even imagine.

We have no idea where they go. That’s part of why God waits for a public judgment until time is over

so that all of those faults can find their end. You have no idea how far a slander or calumny or

backbite or criticism will go, especially if it’s aimed at another person and their reputation. God waits

until all of that has made its way to the final end when all of us are done and dead so that when it has

come to its end we can finally see the measure of all that we have done. Isn’t that terrifying? I hate

that idea, especially because I am so guilty of this. In impatience I say the ugliest things, stupid stuff,

because I don’t think about it. My first reaction is just to say something. “Fools thoughts are in their

mouths, wise men words are in their hearts”, says the scriptures. “A prudent man passes all that he

wants to say in his heart and he weighs it all before speaking.” This counsel of prudence was

religiously observed by our Mother. As it says in Luke, Mary “kept in mind all these things and she

pondered them in her heart.”

If we wanted to list the sins of the tongue we might say these: False witness and perjury (That’s one

of the Ten Commandments), rash judgment, detraction, calumny, flattery, adulation, boasting or

bragging, lying, and I even read where somebody had said sarcasm. These are all sins against charity

and justice. They all constitute an offense, either by spreading untruth by another person or spreading

a faults of another person or by withholding information by someone who has a right to know or by

maliciously caricaturing an aspect of some person’s behavior. That’s from the Catechism 2475-2487.

That happens, for example, when you make fun of someone in the grocery store checkout line with the

EBT card and the 5 kids and the cart full of soda and chips and frozen pizza. And in your head you’re

going “Way to go, loser. Close your legs and get a job. Quit sucking off the government teat.” We

snark. That voice gets started in our heads. These are sins of rash judgment and backbiting even if we

don’t say them, but especially if we do say them. Eventually we might go home and tell somebody


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about that person we saw at the grocery store and now we have committed that sin in actuality, not

just in the heart but through our words. How do we really know that those kids are all hers, that she is

buying the food for herself, that she doesn’t have a job, that she wants to be on welfare, or that she

somehow deserves us and our scorn for the way she paid for her groceries. Who do we think we are?

Pope Francis says that we judge our brothers and sisters in our heart, and worse, when we talk about it

with others we become killer Christians. Killer Christians. That is very, very sad but we are all guilty

of it at some point or another. Some of us have a habit of this awful backbiting and slander and lying

and sins of the mouth that we really need to get under control. The Holy Spirit is speaking to us all

about the way we speak today and we really, really need to pray for his help.

We’re talking about how the Holy Spirit is calling us to kindness, to the law of the kindness because it

is in the tongue. The Bible says “The law of kindness is in the tongue.” Augustine says that we can’t

be kind in our speech without the Holy Spirit. Truly, that must be why it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit,

that kindness in our speech, because it is so very difficult. We saw James said it is near impossible and

Augustine says it is impossible. If it is impossible, Dear One, we must have the Holy Spirit’s help. I

know that as I have been listing these things and all of the ways that we can be guilty of sins of speech

that the Holy Spirit has brought to your mind specific instances in which you are guilty. I pray that you

would take those, even though they may not be mortal sin, or maybe they are – maybe you have lied on

purpose or whatever – but I pray that you would run to Confession and get that cleaned up so that you

can start fresh with the Holy Spirit and he can begin anew.

One of the things that I like to do is imagine that story of Daniel and his friends in the lions dens and

how it says that the angel of the Lord closed the lions mouth. I imagine my mouth is that lion and that

God has to close my mouth for me and that he has to stand guard at my mouth. I actually pray for my

guardian angel to guard my mouth. What actually happens is most of this is a habit. We have a habit

of doing this, and what we have to do is be conscious of doing it. That’s why we’re looking at it, first of

all. It’s not to browbeat ourselves or beat up on ourselves. I’m not beating up on you. I’m just saying

we have to be aware of doing it. That’s the first step. The second step, though, is inviting the Holy

Spirit into that sin and asking us to help us with it. Our guardian angel can stand guard at our mouths.

What we need to ask them to do, our guarding angel and the Holy Spirit, is to catch us before it comes

out. Just about the time it’s going to erupt out of our mouths, we need the Holy Spirit to check our

spirit and say “Hey, don’t say that.” If you ask him to do that, he will do that. He has done that and

continues to do that for me on a regular basis. Imagine yourself and yourself as that lion, and the

angel of the Lord is going to guard your mouth from those sins of speech so that we don’t fall into this

horrible category that St. James talks about, this hell-breathing sin of speech. We don’t want to that

anymore and we need the Holy Spirit’s help. That is my first encouragement. Go to Confession, pray

for help from your guardian angel and from the Holy Spirit and then move forward on a daily basis to

say nice things. Just the kind ones. Don’t let the ugly ones come out. You may still think it but after a

while you’ll build up a habit and you won’t even think them much anymore. I know that a lot of times

the things we say come from the weakness of our flesh: We might be hungry or tired, lots of things

contribute to this. I am just pointing it out because it is a fruit of the spirit and we are not kind.

We’re not kind to another another, to our brothers and sisters in the faith. We get online and say ugly

things about one another.

Listen, you can have a complete polar opposite opinion on something and you can be a Christian and so

can they. We’re not all at the same place, and it’s not for us to judge. Do we know them by their

fruits? Yes, we do. But our fruits, Dear One, are from the mouth.


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If you’re constantly popping off then your fruit is bad, no matter if you go to mass every week or every

day. Whatever all of your good works are, if you don’t get this tongue under control then you’re

laboring under deception, according to St. James. You can’t do both things. You can’t have a tongue

that is consecrated to God and then be dragging down your brothers and sisters in the faith, or even

yourself. Self-talk figures in there too, that negativity, but we dealt with that in the last study so I

don’t want to focus on that too much now. Right now we’re talking about how we treat other people.

The obvious sins of the tongue, then, Proverbs 10:19 says “In a multitude of words sin is not lacking.”

Sometimes we need to just be quiet. The older I get the more comfortable I am with not having to

have not just the last word but any word at all. If somebody wants to act like a fool and say something

stupid or just flat-out wrong, I often say nothing. I used to do this a lot because I have the gift of

teaching – I would get into conversations with other people about things like what something means in

the Bible or whatever, and then argue. I just don’t argue anymore because it doesn’t matter. If it’s

an error I might point it out if I feel led by the Holy Spirit, but sometimes it’s not necessary.

Sometimes we just have to be quiet.

Obvious sins of the tongue then are:

• Detraction, speaking about another person’s faults without a good reason. That would be like

a legal reason. The only really good reason to talk about someone else’s faults is for reporting,

like if you legally have to report or in a church situation where you have to report something.

To just tell somebody’s faults or something that you know on somebody is a sin, Sirach 21 says.

• There is calumny, which is speaking about another person’s faults that are no true. Detraction

is saying something that is true but is not necessary to say. Calumny is speaking about another

person’s faults that are not true at all. They don’t even have that fault.

• Bickering is biting remarks. Sometimes sarcasm can come under that, or saying something

nasty.

• Nagging, constant complaining or scolding or correction or criticism about somebody’s fault,

even if it is true. That’s what I was falling into with my son. My husband, as I say, has that

gift of criticism.

• Egocentrism, constantly referring to yourself: what you say, what you did, me, me, me. We

all know people like that. Those people are usually very insecure and they go around talking

about themselves and their stuff and their people all the time because they are insecure.

• Breaking confidences. There are natural secrets that should not be said or spread. People

have a right to their reputation. That is Biblical. Proverbs 11:13. Each person has a right to

his or her reputation, and by these obvious sins of the tongue we detract by this person’s

reputation.

• Dominating a conversation to prove a point. Most of the time we’re not even aware we are

doing it. People who dominate the conversation is where I have really learned not to say

anything. If you have to be the center of attention I’m just going to let you have it. I’m not

going to fight you for it. It’s not necessary. I have somebody in my family that’s like this, and

every single conversation has to be about them. I’ve just gotten to the point that I don’t say

anything at all. I just let them talk. “Okay, it’s about your kids.” Whatever it is, I just agree.

“You’re right. You got better kids. You’ve got a better marriage, better house, better job,

better everything.” Just agree with them. There is no point in arguing. Don’t dominate

conversation because you have to prove a point.

• Salacious jokes and talk. It’s that bawdiness. I know that it’s in jest and fun sometimes but

men especially are bad about letting that get out of hand. Girls are too, you know, when we


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get together and the conversation sometimes goes in that direction. I know it’s all in fun but

we have to be careful about it. It’s speaking impurely according to Ephesians 5:3-4.

So what exactly is the definition of backbiting or detraction? St. Thomas Acquinas says that backbiting

is “denigration of a neighbor’s reputation by means of secret words. Indeed, a person may wound

someone by word in two ways: openly and to his face, that is by insulting him, or secretly when he is

absent.” That is backbiting. Somebody once St. Anthony what backbiting was and he said “It’s every

sort of wicked word we dare not speak in front of the person about whom we are talking.”

Other faults of speech that are not so obvious are:

• Talking can be a big waste of time. When our talk is empty or gossipy it’s just a waste of time,

then we neglect the spiritual when we are talking with other people. That’s the main business

of our whole life. Our whole life is consecrated to God so we have to be careful. Not that we

have to always go around talking about Jesus, but just that we should keep it in mind and not

let the conversation deviate to coarse talk.

• Dissipation or draining of our psychic energy leaves us tired and distracted. We can’t do our

work because we’re talking all the time and because we’re talking so much we don’t have the

energy to do anything else.

• A bad example. This kind of thing is a bad example to our family and friends, but especially to

our children.

• Excessive comfort seeking through words. I see people do this all the time. You talk over and

over again about your hurts. It doesn’t do it any good.

• Excusing ourselves when we shouldn’t.

• Vain discussions when our time could be better spent.

• Meddling in other people’s affairs.

How do we overcome it? Daily prayer, Confession, Holy Communion. Pray for the graces to recognize

the sins of the tongue and to prevent them before they come out. We need to pray for the graces to

keep silent during discussions in bad situations. We need to pray for the grace to keep silent during the

discussion of another person. We saw that St. John Vianney said to say something nice about the

person and walk away. Just keep silent. There is a big rule: Never pass on an uncomplimentary

comment or information about another person unless the word of God has given you the specific

authority and responsibility to do so and the person you are informing has a responsibility in the

situation and may need to know it. That would be a fraternal correction sort of situation.

One of the things that I loved and that I remembered in doing the research for this show is Maya

Angelou’s poem on the inauguration of Bill Clinton. She said, “Lift up your hearts Each new hour holds

new chances For new beginnings. Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this

fine day…You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, into Your brother's

face…And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning.”

Dear One, this week only speak kind words and the law of kindness will be in your mouth.


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the law of kindness is in the mouth€¦ · and lift all you’ve been giving. speaking of loving...

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