Monday of the Third Week of Easter
Acts of the Apostles is proclaimed almost daily throughout the fifty days of Easter, Luke’s sequel to his Gospel. Acts is a great Easter book and “the Gospel of the Holy Spirit.”
Today begins the story of Stephen the proto-martyr, one truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. Luke tells us that Stephen stood accused and ultimately condemned because of gossip, half truths, and innuendo.
Pope Francis has called gossip worse than the coronavirus. “Please, brothers and sisters, let’s make an effort not to gossip. Gossiping is a worse plague than COVID,” the Holy Father said during one of his weekly addresses at St. Peter’s Square.
“The devil is the great gossip. He is always saying bad things about others because he is a liar, the Father of lies,” the Holy Father added.
What makes it even more insidious, is that the demonic likes to mix lies with the truth, to confound us.
The pope has regularly warned of the risks of gossiping and has railed against Internet trolls: “If something goes wrong, offer silence and prayer for the brother or sister who makes a mistake, but never spread rumors,” he said recently.
As a result of constant communication about other people, thanks to mass media, what years ago was whispered between a few people now goes viral and can never be retrieved. As a result, passing on stories that ruin others' good names is more than cyber bullying. It is destroying another’s place in the community as well as destroying their person.
Charles Spurgeon, one of the most popular preachers of the 19th century, summed up the evil of gossiping by saying, "the tale-bearer carries the devil in his tongue, and the tale-hearer carries the devil in his ear." Gossip makes the devil laugh!
-Timothy J. Cronin