Today's Thoughts...

Today’s Thoughts: There is a quote from St. Bede the Venerable that goes like this, “Let us speak the truth in our hearts and not practice treachery with our tongues, so that by pouring forth charity more and more in our hearts, the Spirit of truth may teach us recognition of all truth.” In this day and age, I might add a little something to what St. Bede said, “…and not practice treachery with our tongues and our fingers!” It is not only the treachery of the spoken word today; it is also the treachery of the written word today. You find it on Twitter, Facebook and in all social media today.
 
It amazes me how negative, hurtful, bigoted and sinful we can be with the words we write about others. We call ourselves Christian yet the pictures we post, the cartoons and videos we send around, the ideas we put forth sometimes are anything but Christian. I guess it is easy to sit in our homes or offices or be walking down the street and attack a person, an organization, a political party, a public servant, someone in leadership. It is even easy for a president to do these things! The people attacked get no chance to defend themselves and our words don’t have to be true. From the comfort of our own electronic device we can post whatever we want and often there are no consequences to our actions whether we are right or wrong. Remember it is a free country and certainly free social media!
 
In the readings from mass today we are reminded about the importance of truth. Jesus (John 15:26 – 16:4a) reminds us that he is sending us the truth through the Holy Spirit from the Father, not Fox News or MSNBC or any other news organization that we agree with. Truth is most often not found in the media sources of today’s world it is found in the hearts of people who journey through life as friends of God.
 
Lydia, whom we meet in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 16:11-15) today, went to the river to pray and her life was changed through the preaching and the presence of Paul. Paul spoke the truth and Lydia allowed it to enter her heart. She came to believe. She invited the truth into her home and into her heart.
 
We need to trust the Spirit in our life not 24-hour news. We need to speak truth about ourselves and others. We need to be friends of God who build up not tear down. There are always going to be those who bring deceitfulness to the living of life may we always be people who bring truth!
 
A couple of years ago I was wondering through the social media, Twitter to be exact and I came upon two tweets from Fr. James Martin, S.J. that I wrote down and I think they speaks to our scriptures today. Fr. Martin was talking about Pope Francis’ visit to the Holy Land. “To those who doubted that Pope Francis could do anything valuable in the Holy Land, or could find grace among warring factions, I say...that you've forgotten about the Holy Spirit again.  Nothing is impossible with God.”
 
Have a blessed Monday and Memorial Day everyone!