02 March 2025

02 March 2025 - Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Transcript

Reading:  

Sirach 27:6-7

Write:  

The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had;
 so too does one’s speech disclose the bent of one’s mind.
 Praise no one before he speaks,
 for it is then that people are tested.

Reflect:   

The Internet can reveal some very good stuff… and some very bad stuff. This weekend went out to find information on two of our previous presidents. I looked up the farewell address of Pres. George Washington and I looked up Pres. Thomas Jefferson’s version of the Bible. Two men revered in our nation’s history. Pres. Washington I can applaud. Pres. Jefferson… not so much.

Pres. Washington’s address to the nation as he left the presidency is well worth the hour or so it takes to read it. In there he addresses a wide range of subjects that he saw in his day that our nation was facing. I would mention two: 1) he said our country could not stand without solid religion and morals as part of the fabric of what the country needs to survive; 2) he said the ruination of our government would happen if we allowed parties – specifically political parties – to become dominant in how we operated. Yes, he was that specific on both issues.

His emphasis on religion and morals reminds me of Patrick Henry whose most famous quote was “give me liberty or give me death” but his most importantquote was “this country was founded on the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Both Washington and Henry proved the fruit of their work as being well worth honoring. They disclosed their minds by what they said. This is the closing paragraph of Washington’s address:

Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize without alloy the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government—the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

We don’t speak this way anymore. But it reveals our first president’s intellect and the desire of his heart.

Our third president also had a very strong intellect. He was one of the major composers of our Declaration of Independence. But, Jefferson was not a great man spiritually. Have you ever heard of the Jefferson Bible? He rejected the idea that miracles were real in the Bible! He cut up Bibles to create his own version without any miracles. Jefferson’s goal was to clarify the teachings of Jesus which he believed provided “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

Okay, but, he did terrible violence to our Christian heritage – to understanding who Jesus is as the Son of God. Let me repeat the close of the gospel: “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.” And I would say the actions of ripping apart the Bible are worse than evil words.

There have been many things done in the course of history to try to distort the message of the gospel. Some of them have been – unfortunately – all to effective. This is my point for this weekend. We need to place our hopes and our dreams solidly in our faith. Not in any kind of a distorted image of the faith, but in the truth of the faith as it has been transmitted to us. As long as I have been speaking about the history of our democracy today, I would suggest to you a line I have heard before about the church: “the church is a democracy, but all the saints of history still have a voice as well!” What this means is that we have to consider the truths that have been revealed to us regarding what the faith is all about. There are unfortunately too many people who think they can rewrite the faith.

Pres. Washington was concerned in his address that we might abandon where we had started from as a country – and this was only eight years after the start of our country! We have the writings in the Gospels with the sayings of Jesus (admittedly, Pres. Jefferson held onto those sayings, but in a weakened way). We have the writings of the apostles – especially St. Paul – who give us clear guidance to how we are called to live. The message of the gospel is more ancient and yet ever new.

Furthermore, it is an ever-present danger that we might misunderstand or mis-state the faith for those who need to hear it. That should not keep us quiet out of some fear that we might fail Jesus. Our lives need to be part of our gospel message. This is what Jesus is talking about in our gospel today. This is what Sirach wrote about in his first reading. This is what we are called to pursue.

We will all run the risk of making mistakes in how we speak about our faith to the world. That is going to happen. But if our lives are lived seeking the truth of the gospel – the fullness of the gospel, which includes miracles and a faith in them – we have a confidence in the presence of the Holy Spirit to make our witnesses true.

This week we begin the great season of Lent. I want to urge you to find something that you can do for the sake of the gospel – even if that is something for the sake of your own soul by choosing to do extra reading, which is my plan – do something for Lent that will draw you closer to Christ and a desire to share his message of salvation. We can all grow holier in what we say and do. This is the message of hope that Saint Paul left us in our second reading this weekend: “Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

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