Month: January 2022

SPEAK LIFE: THE POWER OF KIND WORDS!

            “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” (Mark 5:41)

There is a popular Christian song by Toby Mac in which he encourages us to “speak life” to other people who are hurting. In the accompanying video to the song we see broken people brought back to life, so to speak, by encouraging words that speak life. Here are a few words from the song:

So speak life, speak life
To the deadest darkest night
Speak life, speak life
When the sun won’t shine and you don’t know why
Look into the eyes of the broken hearted
Watch them come alive as soon as you speak hope

Jesus spoke life, and, moreover, he is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). One day Jesus entered the home of a twelve year old girl who had died, and he spoke words of life to her, commanding her to rise and get up, and amazingly, she did (see Mark 5: 22-43)! Jesus not only spoke words of life, but of Eternal Life, of unceasing life. “In the preaching of Jesus,” says Father Garrigou-Lagrange, “everything is immediately directed to eternal life.” Jesus is the principle of Eternal Life.

God the Father spoke words of life and encouragement to Jesus, saying, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 17:5). Have you spoken life-giving words to your children as the Eternal Father did to Jesus? Speak life…and watch them come alive as soon as you speak hope! Let me say this: the Word of Life spoken by the Father (and from all eternity) is Jesus Christ (“and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” – John 1:14). Jesus is Life. Draw closer to Him.

But how often do we not speak life? Worse than that, how often do we speak words of spiritual death? How often do we hurt other people because of mean or poorly chosen words?

The great Dominican and German mystic, Tauler, gives us this all-important advice:

“We must bridle the old, natural tongue. Children, above all arts, learn the art of guarding your tongue, and be careful about what you say, or no good will ever come of you. See to it that your words are to God’a honor, to your neighbor’s improvement, and to your own peace…. Your conversation should rest upon a solid basis of virtue rather than on glib speaking and subtleties. And you should speak with restraint and advisedly. By ill-considered words you can bring [great harm] on yourselves and on your hearers” (Spiritual Conferences, p. 184).

We should reflect deeply on the life-giving power of kind words. The great spiritual writer, Father Faber, says there is “hardly a power on earth equal to” kind words. He further points out that there are so many “fortunate opportunities” to be kind. When you think about it, the opportunity for great heroism may never come our way, but we can say kind things all day long! And what do kind words cost us (asks Faber)? Virtually nothing! But what is lost if we fail to speak kindly? As Faber points out, kind words are not only remedial, helping those in need of encouragement, they actually produce happiness. He says, “how often have we ourselves been made happy by kind words.” It “would be worth going through fire and water to acquire the right and to find the opportunity of saying kind words.”

Faber says that “not only is kindness due everyone, but a special kindness is due everyone.” And “is there any happiness in the world like the happiness of the disposition made happy by the happiness of others?,” Faber asks. “There is no joy to be compared with it.” “Kindness is the turf of the spiritual world, whereon the sheep of Christ feed quietly beneath the Shepherd’s eye.”

Jesus speaks life. We see throughout the Gospels the tremendous and extraordinary power Jesus possessed to affirm others! People in the presence of the most dire circumstances suddenly find their lives transformed by the dynamic, affirming presence of Jesus. Whether it be the woman at the well, Zacchaeus (the dishonest tax collector), the woman caught in adultery, the man who came to Jesus through an opening in the roof, or the immoral woman who dried Jesus’ feet with her hair, Jesus is authentically open to them, he makes time for them, he affirms and does not condemn them, and ultimately he liberates them from the tyranny of sin. Thus, as one example, he says to the woman caught in adultery: “Has no one condemned you? Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:10-11). And Zacchaeus comes away from his encounter with Jesus vowing to make restitution to all those he has defrauded (Luke 19:8).

Dear friend, speak life! And to do this we must learn the art of watching over very carefully what we say so that we are not – once again – “hung by the tongue.” Learn the art of guarding your tongue, and in the process you will become, more and more, a person who speaks life to the benefit of all who share in the grace of your kind and transforming speech!

Thomas L. Mulcahy, M.A.

P.S. Here is a link to Toby Mac’s song, Speak Life   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeBv9r92VQ0

Spiritual principle: The key and tremendously important spiritual principle being advanced here is watchfulness, whereby we keep a keen spiritual eye on what we are thinking and saying so as to bring our thoughts and speech under the law of Christian charity. Saint Paul says that we “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

Image: Raising of Jairus’ Daughter by Ilya Repin (Public Domain, U.S.A.)

References: The quotes from Father Faber are from his famous essay,  “Kindness,” in his book, Spiritual Conferences (TAN). Although a long essay it is well worth reading and meditating on. Faber’s point that a special kindness is due to everyone, if taken to heart, has the power to increase our personal holiness. One word of caution: kindness and praise must be sincere and genuine. A false kindness, a calculated kindness, is easily detected. That is why we should pray to the Holy Spirit for the supernatural growth of the virtue of kindness. I am also relying on a beautiful little book entitled, Born Only Once: The Miracle of Affirmation by Dr. Conrad W. Baars, a Catholic psychiatrist. The great spiritual writer, Father Lallemant, once said:   “Everything in Jesus is a principle of eternal life.”

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C.S. LEWIS’ WARNING ABOUT MAN-MADE IDEOLOGIES AND THE ABOLITION OF MAN

“The fatal superstition that men can create values, that a community can choose its ‘ideology,’ as men choose their clothes.” (C.S. Lewis)

The great theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, tells us that man first sinned by the desire to define for himself what is good and what is evil. Saint Thomas says that “man sinned primarily in aiming at a resemblance of God in virtue of which he should be capable of fixing for himself moral good and moral evil” (Summa Theologica, II-II, q.163, a. 2.).

The C.S. Lewis scholar, Walter Hooper, tells us that the “Summa Theologica is a work Lewis used constantly,” and in The Abolition of Man C.S. Lewis provides a defense of the Natural Law and of objective values as against man-made ideologies that harm and dehumanize us, thus defending the tradition of universal moral norms just as Aquinas did.

With respect to the dangers of man-made ideologies Lewis states: “For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means…the power of some men to make other men what they please.” Lewis adds that the “man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique” (pp. 72-73).

“They are like,” says Lewis, “men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what “Humanity” shall henceforth mean.” It’s not like “they are bad men,” says Lewis. Having stepped outside the Natural law, these men have “stepped into the void.” They are “not men at all: they are artefacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of man” (p.77).

Lewis adds this grim observation: “I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.” Certainly, one can think of many modern examples where such power has been used to crush and control other human beings. Thus, says Lewis, “a dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery” (84).

We now come to the crux of Lewis’ argument, to a quote and a warning which stands out as the key statement in the book, and which at the same time demonstrates Lewis’ literary prowess in expressing a philosophical idea and a grave concern in a few dazzling, power-packed sentences. Lewis says:

“The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists. The methods may (at first) differ in brutality. But many a mild-eyed scientist, many a popular dramatist, many an amateur philosopher in our midst, means in the long run just the same as the Nazi rulers of Germany: Traditional values are to be ‘debunked’ and mankind to be cut out into some fresh shape at the will (which must, by hypothesis, be an arbitrary will) of some few lucky people in one lucky generation which has learned how to do it.

The belief that we can invent ‘ideologies’ at pleasure, and the consequent treatment of mankind as mere specimens, preparations, begins to affect our very language. Once we killed bad men: now we liquidate unsocial elements” (p. 85, slightly edited).

CONCLUSION:

“The [Catholic] Church’s firmness in defending the universal and unchanging moral norms is not demeaning at all. Its only purpose is to serve man’s true freedom. Because there can be no freedom apart from or in opposition to the truth, the categorical — unyielding and uncompromising — defence of the absolutely essential demands of man’s personal dignity must be considered the way and the condition for the very existence of freedom.

This service is directed to every man, considered in the uniqueness and singularity of his being and existence: only by obedience to universal moral norms does man find full confirmation of his personal uniqueness and the possibility of authentic moral growth. For this very reason, this service is also directed to all mankind: it is not only for individuals but also for the community, for society as such. These norms in fact represent the unshakable foundation and solid guarantee of a just and peaceful human coexistence, and hence of genuine democracy, which can come into being and develop only on the basis of the equality of all its members, who possess common rights and duties. When it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the “poorest of the poor” on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal” (Saint Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 96).

COMMENT: When considering the current plethora of man-made ideologies and social constructs crowding the intellectual landscape, consider whether they are rooted in reality, in the natural law, in common sense, and in biological reality.

Thomas L. Mulcahy, M.A.

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