Friday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

Sometimes I think I am guilty of paying too little attention to words and the damage they can do. What was I taught as a child? “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Yet of course, it is clearly evident that words hurt. And more particularly, the words we speak to loved ones and friends, people we know best, are the words that are liable to hurt the most. Strangers’ words may be shrugged off, but loved ones’ words stick around, perhaps to be dredged up in a later accusation, or later fight. Today’s readings focus on the need to pay attention to words, because they have the power to hurt. The first reading (Genesis 11:1-9) discusses the familiar Tower of Babel story. At that time, everyone had the same language, and because they could speak with the same words, they were better able to plan cunning, if disastrous moves. So, God finds the people building a tower to heaven, and God concludes that perhaps the people are focusing a bit too much on themselves, and on how great they are. They can build stairways to heaven!

God’s response is an attempt to make the people more humble – through words. Just as the peoples’ power was shown in their ability to speak the same language, God’s power is shown in the ability to disperse the languages, and make people unintelligible to each other. Humility, for the people of Babel, is seen as a healing thing for humanity, even if they do not see it that way.

It is no mistake that in John’s Gospel, Jesus is called The Word. Christian tradition makes much of Jesus as the Word, and when we see the Word in the context of all the other things we also think about Jesus Christ, we see that God’s Word is also the redeemer, the savior, the healer, the teacher, etc.

In today’s gospel (Mark 8:34-9:1), Jesus the Word is admonishing people not to take too much pride in their own words and to focus instead on his. “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words…the Son of Man will be ashamed of….” Jesus’ words draw us into a counter-cultural life, one that looks strange and often embarrassing to our contemporary culture. I think of Christians I know who try to live very counter-culturally: people who make pledges of chastity, or who join the celibate priesthood, or who are Christian pacifists. Jesus calls us not to be embarrassed about the lives that we live in Christ, even though it is easy to be embarrassed.

Today, let us think about our words carefully, and strive to speak words that witness to The Word.

- Jana M. Bennett