8th Sunday Reflection: The Power Of Our Words
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage
Eighth Sunday In Ordinary Time Year C – (Luke 6:39-45) –
From the true self we speak according to what overflows from the heart; words with the power to destroy and the power to build up, a force that weighs on the spirit, to bring forth bitterness or blessing, grumbling resentment or gratitude, to create peace or to stir up hatred and violence, the fruit of life or death. “But I tell you that all will have to give account on the day of judgement for every idle word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words, you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:36–37).
Know thyself; this is our journey, searching for truth, for inner self-knowledge. Yet our troubled human condition leaves us in a turmoil of emotions, carrying within us deep hurts, anger, resentment, lost love, broken relationships, desperately seeking to fill our lives with happiness and peace, to love and to be loved. It is the experience of Love through conscious reason that overcomes our disturbed human condition. By coming to know ourselves in the eyes of the Beloved, all pain, illusion, and fear are overcome.
As the mystic hermit, Thomas Merton was searching for this same truth and identity, he came to a deep insight that each human person already has what they are looking for: “Within myself is a metaphorical apex of existence at which I am held in being by my Creator.” To live the truth of our existence is to be a saint. “A tree is holy,” he wrote, “simply by being a tree;” flowers are saints gazing up into the face of God.
For St Francis’ also knew that Jesus dwelled within him, that God was nowhere farther than his own heart. But his quest was to find other Presences of God. Somewhere along the way, he had begun finding God everywhere because God was with him all the time. He brought love with him on the road and that is why he found love all along the way. It was all so simple when he thought about it now. Love comes to those who have Love already. You find what you bring with you in your heart. God has first loved us and that gift is ours before we ever set out to find it. (Murray Bodo: Francis: The Journey and the Dream)
The search for our true identity requires honest, vulnerable self-love. Love of self is not selfishness but a humble recognition of our lives as true, good, and beautiful. To see as God sees. Without real love of self, all other loves are distorted. Lack of self-knowledge as St. Bonaventure once wrote, makes for faulty knowledge in all other matters.
This mirrors the understanding of St Francis that we already carry the Love that we seek within ourselves. When I find my true self, I find God. But there is also the possibility to live outside the truth of my existence, to live the horrors of my illusions. Deceiving ourselves so that the tree can no longer produce the fruits of our true holiness, but the fruits of illusion, shame, anger, and fear.
Habitual patterns and responses are our opportunity to examine our body consciousness, cognitive awareness, and communication distortions affecting us and our relationships. The endemic overcommitment to activities and people-pleasing can be overcome by awareness, our choices, creating boundaries, and setting priorities and life goals. Self-knowledge requires the nurturing of silence to quiet the lizard brain, the discipline of quiet observation to still the constant stream of judgements that block the expansion of our consciousness into awareness.
This must become our quest through the dark night into a new consciousness.
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