Jesus, John, and Paul Would Like You to Stop Gossiping, Please
5th Sunday of Easter
I’d like for us to imagine what people might have been saying about Saul when the Acts of the Apostles says the disciples “were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.” Saul, of course, had once been “breathing out murderous threats” against the disciples and consented to the stoning of Stephen the First Deacon and First Martyr. Their fear and uncertainty are understandable, but let’s imagine how in particular they might have expressed their concern:
Saul can’t be trusted. He’s receiving bribes from Caesar to hand us over.
Saul may have changed, but you should have heard what he said at Stephen’s execution.
Saul might claim to a disciple, but I heard that he’s still working for the Pharisees.
We obviously have no way of knowing what was said, but human nature being what it is, these statements all seem plausible. In fact, all I am suggesting is that the early Christians might have spoken in the same ways that we do, through calumny, detraction, and gossip. Calumny is making false and defamatory statements about someone in order to damage their reputation (He’s receiving bribes from Caesar to hand us over). Detraction is disparaging or belittling the reputation or worth of a person on account of some truth about them that may or may not be publicly known (You should have heard what he said at Stephen’s execution). Gossip is conversing about other people typically involving details that are not confirmed to be true (He’s still working for the Pharisees).
Speaking first and foremost of myself, we are not strangers to these sins. We speak about people all the time in ways that tear down the esteem in which others hold them. The question for our reflection is simply whether we realize it.
When recently in Rome, I was walking down the street behind two Italian women on the younger side of elderly who were engaged in what appeared to be a rather juicy conversation. They walked slowly, leaning in to hear the other’s whispers, occasionally stopping in astonishment at what was said. I thought, this is surely an allegory of gossip. If only Botticelli were here to paint it! As I watched, and as I think about, those women, I’m painfully aware of how often I do the same — how often I’ve been engaged in frivolous conversation about others that hasn’t done any good for them but torn them down; how often I’ve talked about others only to gratify myself. And since human nature is what it is, I’m sure the same is true for you.
At the height of the pandemic, Pope Francis called gossip “a plague worse than Covid.” In fact, we can measure the difference not only quantitatively — as the 750 million reported cases of Covid surely pale in comparison with gossip which is a truly universal phenomenon — but also qualitatively, as gossip does not kill the body but rather kills the spirit. For this reason, Pope Francis, following the moral tradition of many saints, has called gossip a kind of murder. Even more, we find in Scripture, particularly in the First Letter of John, the teaching that “Any one who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (3:15). Thus, when the same letter tells us today to “love not in word or speech but in deed and truth” it means that we cannot merely pay lip service to love but, rather, must with our lips speak and promote love and avoid any speech that causes injury.
Now, we do not need to believe in Christ to know that we shouldn’t engage in gossip, calumny, or detraction, as anyone who has been the subject of these sins knows first-hand the tremendous damage they cause; however, as apparently even that is not enough for us to knock it off, the New Testament clearly and persistently challenges us to avoid them and promote unity, or according to the properly Christian term, to pursue communion. The devil’s chief objective is to sow division into God’s field, to introduce weeds among the wheat. And let us not overlook the evil one’s method as working from within. He preys upon our fear and anger, our jealousy and resentment, our prejudices and biases that he leverages to drive us apart from each other. And we see the devil’s hand most clearly on display when we justify our division on the very grounds of preserving communion. This was exactly the case in the Acts of the Apostles: Saul needed to be resisted for the sake of the flock of Christ to stay intact. We hear something similar in some of what has been said today regarding the Seek the City process, how preserving this or that community cannot be done if they are forced to merge or be moved to another.
All of this betrays the Christian spirit, for the entire Christian life is, in point of fact, articulated for us by Christ himself in the Gospel: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither.” Christ the vine is the source of our life, and if Satan is successful in separating us from him by dividing us from each other, then we lose our vitality and become useless. Communion in the Church always means remaining firmly rooted in the vine which means bearing a relationship of sincere love with all those branches who are also attached to him.
To conclude on a practical note, let me offer some advice on avoiding these sins of division — advice which I offer to myself in the same breath. First, I think we talk about others because we have nothing else interesting to talk about. So, the first step would be to live better — reading books, engaging in hobbies, having good thinks about challenging issues — that will simply give us something to talk about. When the well runs dry, so to speak, we only pull up dirt, and after a while, we start to mistake the dirt for the water of good conversation. Second, when we do talk about others, we need to always ask ourselves: Is this helpful? Does this help the person in question? Does this help the person I’m talking to? Does this help me? If we can’t say yes to all three questions, then we should move on from the issue to something productive. Third, and most importantly, we need to root our relationships in prayer. The problem that the evil one capitalizes on is that we already live disconnected lives. We fail to see each other as branches with us on the vine of Christ. We relegate our relationship with God to our interior life and engage with people in the world as if they bore no relation to God. This is exactly what the devil uses against us and against communion. The remedy is to pray for each other — our family, our friends, our fellow parishioners — so that we may resist the temptation to be driven away from them and may instead be part of the Lord’s work of building up the Body of Christ, which is the Church.
I don’t think it’s by accident, based upon the reception he first received after his conversion, that Saint Paul wrote extensively in nearly all his letters on the importance of communion in the Church. He knew its necessity first-hand and became an evangelist of it. May this Eucharist draw us more tightly together as Christ’s Body and unite us now and until the end of time firmly within the Spirit’s bond of peace.
Homily preached April 27/28, 2024 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish.