Eighth Sunday in Course 2025
Some people don’t have the deuterocanonical book of Sirach in their Bibles, so I’ll read some of the first reading. Sirach was written in Hebrew, but over the years those versions were mostly lost, but survive in Greek. The book is mostly a compilation of proverbs, like the book of Proverbs. They are written to teach the young how to live an honest and reverent and dignified life. So here is some of the first reading:
“When a sieve is shaken, the refuse remains; so a man's filth remains in his thoughts. The kiln tests the potter's vessels; so the test of a man is in his reasoning . . . Do not praise a man before you hear him reason, for this is the test of men.”
Thomas Aquinas, the acknowledged greatest theologian of his time, about 1300 years later, asked whether there could be mortal, or deadly, sin in the sensuality. (ST I-II Q. 74 Art 4) Sometimes we can get a temptation in our minds, perhaps to drink to excess, or to look lustfully at another person. That’s sensuality, offering our minds the chance to take pleasure where we have no right to do so. We all know that the Internet has given us lots of opportunities to do that, hasn’t it? Is the temptation itself sinful?
Thomas tells us that it belongs to reason alone, to our mind, to order anything to its end. Our end is union with God, so anything that we decide to favor over God is sinful. But that action belongs to our reason alone, to our mind and will. So deadly sin cannot be in the sensuality by itself. We have to get the thought and then agree with the “filth remain[ing] in [our] thoughts” in order to sin mortally.
But, as we look forward today to Lent beginning on Wednesday, it’s a good idea to remind ourselves that we should avoid the near occasions of sin, like certain sites on the Web, or certain shows on TV or the Internet. In other words, get out of the way of temptations, and we’ll be able better to focus on our relationship with our Lord.
So it’s true that we should take our time deciding on whether to make a new acquaintance into a friend, and see how he thinks, particularly about right and wrong. And, like the psalmist, if we both see that it is good to thank and praise the Lord for His goodness, making the acquaintance into a friend will end up planting both in the presence of the Lord, bearing good fruit even into old age.
Jesus shares with us today a set of proverbs, too. One of them is a kind of funny allegory. Some Christians—I hope nobody here—believe so firmly in fraternal correction that they are always looking for opportunities to correct others. They do that more readily than correcting their own behavior. So Jesus gives us one of His best hyperboles. Folks like that are like an amateur eye doctor looking for little splinters in other peoples’ eyes, but their own eye has a huge tree branch impeding its vision. Change your own attitude and behavior, repent, and clear out the impeding chunk of wood before you offer to help another person change his life. Really!
Then Jesus gets to the final, maybe the most important point for those of us who want to grow spiritually into images of Jesus. It sounds a lot like what Sirach taught a couple of hundred years earlier: “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” This Lent we should grow treasures in our heart, through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and more and more we’ll find the words coming from our lips to be in line with the thoughts and actions of Christ, our Master and brother.
Let’s be entirely honest. This Lent and Easter may be my last—may be your last. At some point we will all be called home by Christ. Should death scare us? If we are in sin, it certainly ought to. If we have a habit of sin, a vicious behavior pattern, that must change so that we can be preparing our minds, hearts and even bodies for the final victory, and for the general Resurrection on the last day. There is no second chance. Our life is not a video game that we can reboot if we look like we’ll lose. St. Paul tells us what we must do so that our perishable nature can put on imperishable reality, and our mortality can slip into immortality. Paul tells us, “beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Pray, fast, and give alms as a good habit of Lent to make us ready for Christ’s final victory.
