Simple Language

     It's been confirmed via my host mom: I am a polite, attentive person en español. While I would like to say that has been a conscious endeavor on my part, it has more to do with my language skills than anything else. While I am often sarcastic in my native tongue, I don't have adequate command of the Spanish language to be anything but exceedingly grateful and more or less pathetic in my speech. While my host mom knows me as a diligent listener, my actual mother can attest that I am often anything but when she talks, in English, to me. I listen in Spanish because I cannot afford not to, if I hope to comprehend anything of what is being said. In short, my vulnerability communicating in a foreign language actually makes me kinder. Insofar as Spanish goes, I am a mere child.

     In meditating upon this, I couldn't help but recall the words of Jesus. Numerous times, he used children as the example of how one ought to be in order to reach Heaven. What merit do children have? Certainly, they are not as educated as the scribes, and their command of language is not as grandiose. But they what they lack in vocabulary they make up for in their plainness of speech. Young children are naive of the methods we older, "wiser" folks use to put others down: our insults, our sarcasm, our slander. As such, their speech, while lacking refinement, is no doubt more redeeming than the most educated human being who speaks ill of others.

     It is a tremendous blessing I have been given, to be able to amass a great wealth of vocabulary and knowledge of grammar in the English language. Should not I use that language to glorify God and build others up? I am ashamed when consider all the times each day when I use language to belittle others or to discuss crude subjects that work towards the benefit of nothing and nobody. Better would it be if I spoke not at all, and maintained for myself the innocence of a baby. Fortunately, the choice is not either-or; either I speak in sin or I remain piously silent. I can speak well of others and well of things, while holding my tongue sometimes when I would rather speak negatively. In speaking only good, God is glorified because He is the creator of all that is good. Additionally, the good that I speak is magnified by the absence of the bad of which I do not speak.

     As the Book of Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak. (Eccl 3:7) It is easy to speak often be called a hypocrite. That criticism is richly deserved, for often my idle speech in the presence of friends does great injury to my speech elsewhere or my writing on this blog. That fault, while a product exclusively of me and my own human weakness, is translated to God and the Church which I proclaim to love and follow. If that be the case, then it would be better that I speak not at all of my faith here. But because I continually receive an abundance of messages from readers who find my thoughts of some worth, I shall continue while striving to reform those parts of my character that are flawed. Please pray for me, as habits are not easy to break. It is comfortable for me to be sarcastic, to make fun of the little faults in others. But as the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI said, while the world offers comfort, it is not for comfort that we were made. We were made for greatness! And if I am to encourage others to seek greatness, than I better not neglect seeking greatness myself.