Known by our Words:
The Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025
March 2, 2025
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Sirach 27:4-7; Psalm 92; 1 Corinthians 15:54-58; Luke 6:39-45
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Sirach states that when one speaks, one’s faults are shown, and that one’s speech reveals the contents of one’s mind. Jesus tells us in the Gospel that a tree is known by its fruit, and therefore, a person is known by how one speaks. These are relevant words for our times because many people rush in to speak and are known by their interjections. So many problems are created by undistinguished words that cause hasty judgments. Sirach counsels us to pause before we speak and to reflect upon how we might be perceived. Do we want to be known as one with passionate beliefs who is quick to get a point across, or do we want to be regarded as one who is wise, slow to speak, compassionate, and seeks to understand? Our words reveal who we are, and many people do not realize how they come across to others. Our words matter.
Many people have been able to skillfully navigate difficult conversations over the past months, and yet we are prepared for those who fill the space with microaggressions or impose their ideologies upon others. We think of that concise line of truth: Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Just because someone makes a fool of oneself does not mean that we must respond at that same level. We can choose how we respond. We can elevate the conversation and raise the standard of relating to each other. The art of communicating is a precious, acquired skill, and the one who does it well is highly regarded.
As Christians, we can help others see through the eyes of faith. Jesus is not the only Risen One, because we have been raised with him. We do not have to give in to the enemy of human nature. We can raise up those around us through our sight and our right speaking. We can notice the huge log in our eye first before seeing the splinter in the other. Who are we to judge? It is not our right. Our responsibility is to give mercy and to reconcile. When we are selfish, we want mercy for ourselves and justice for others. We are to help people see and we do it through our actions. When others act selfishly, we need courage to die to our own selfishness. When others condemn, we need to absolve and to commend. When others move to divide and destroy, we must speak words of union and communion. When others use words of violence, threat, and harm, we must work overtime to produce goodness because in the end, good will prevail over hatred. Love will be the ultimate power that endures. We must learn to love in difficult times because the balance of the world depends upon it.
Jesus speaks about blind guides as a warning to us. We must do all that we can to learn this unique love of God that unifies, does not give way to violence, that cannot destroy or degrade, that pledges no allegiance to an ideology, that does not seek victory or its own rightness. Rather, it is the way forward to one who wants to know God. Coming to sight, coming to know God, coming to love each person as God loves each person, will be the way of righteousness. We will then speak rightly of what we know, and all that we say will lift up those around us.
Scripture for Daily Mass
First Reading:
Monday: (Sirach 17) To the penitent God provides a way back, he encourages those who are losing hope and has chosen for them the lot of truth. Return to him and give up sin, pray to the LORD and make your offenses few.
Tuesday: (Sirach 35) To keep the law is a great oblation, and he who observes the
commandments sacrifices a peace offering. In works of charity, one offers fine flour, and when he gives alms he presents his sacrifice of praise.
Wednesday: (Joel 2) Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.
Thursday: (Deuteronomy 30) Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous, and the LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy.
Friday (Isaiah 58) Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; Tell my people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins. They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways, Like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the law of their God.
Saturday (Isaiah 58) If you hold back your foot on the sabbath from following your own pursuits on my holy day; If you call the sabbath a delight, and the LORD’s holy day honorable; If you honor it by not following your ways, seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice Then you shall delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.
Gospel:
Monday: (Mark 10) As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, ""Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"" Jesus answered him, ""Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
Tuesday: (Mark 10) Peter began to say to Jesus, 'We have given up everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age.
Wednesday (Matthew 6) Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others.
Thursday (Luke 9) The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.
Friday (Mark 9) “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”
Saturday (Luke 5) Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them.
Saints of the Week
March 7: Perpetua and Felicity (d. 203), were two catechumens arrest and killed during a persecution in North Africa. Perpetua was a young noblewoman who was killed alongside her husband, their young son, and their pregnant slave, Felicity. They were baptized while under arrest and would not renounce their faith. Felicity was excused from death because it was unlawful to kill a pregnant woman, but she gave birth prematurely three days before the planned execution. They were flogged, taunted by wild beasts, and then beheaded. They appear in the First Eucharistic Prayer.
March 8: John of God (1495-1550), was a Portuguese soldier of fortune who was brought to Spain as a child. He was a slave master, shepherd, crusader, bodyguard and peddler. As he realized that he frittered away his life, he sought counsel from John of Avila. He then dedicated his life to care for the sick and the poor. He formed the Order of Brothers Hospitallers and is the patron saint of hospitals and the sick.
This Week in Jesuit History
- March 2, 1606. The martyrdom in the Tower of London of St Nicholas Owen, a brother nicknamed "Little John." For 26 years he constructed hiding places for priests in homes throughout England. Despite severe torture he never revealed the location of these safe places.
- March 3, 1595. Clement VIII raised Fr. Robert Bellarmine to the Cardinalate, saying that the Church had not his equal in learning.
- March 4, 1873. At Rome, the government officials presented themselves at the Professed House of the Gesu for the purpose of appropriating the greater part of the building.
- March 5, 1887. At Rome, the obsequies of Fr. Beckx who died on the previous day. He was 91 years of age and had governed the Society as General for 34 years. He is buried at San Lorenzo in Campo Verano.
- March 6, 1643. Arnauld, the Jansenist, published his famous tract against Frequent Communion. Fifteen French bishops gave it their approval, whereas the Jesuit fathers at once exposed the dangers in it.
- March 7, 1581. The Fifth General Congregation of the Society bound the professors of the Society to adhere to the doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas.
- March 8, 1773. At Centi, in the diocese of Bologna, Cardinal Malvezzi paid a surprise visit to the Jesuit house, demanding to inspect their accounting books.