Trust in God

Father Leo Hausman
The 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time
March 2, 2025

The readings today call us to integrity of life, that our lives in speech and action are consistent with God’s Word that has come down to us in Sacred Scripture and his Church. 

The first reading was taken from the Book of Sirach. Originally this book was named “The Wisdom of Ben Sirach.” This book played an important role in shaping the faith of the Jewish people. It equipped them to cope with the imminent menace of Greek culture, which ran completely counter to the monotheism of the people of the Old Covenant. 

Early on in Christianity the Book of Sirach was used as a kind of official catechism used in the instruction of those who were joining the Church. In the passage from the Book of Sirach that we heard today, the sacred author uses images of a farmer’s sieve and a potter’s clay and the fruit of the tree to teach how a person’s speech reveals that which is in his heart. When a man speaks: his faults, his pride, and his ignorance are exposed. 

The wisdom of these images is useful in evaluating the advice from others that we receive in life, as well as evaluating the good or evil teachings that come to us from our culture. Just as the Book of Sirach helped the Jewish people of the Old Testament to protect themselves from the poisonous influence of the Greek culture that could have destroyed their faith in the one true God, the wisdom of this book is one of the tools God has given us to protect our faith and moral life from falsehoods that come from our present day culture.

Sirach’s teaching serves as an excellent preview for today’s Gospel. In the Gospel, Jesus asked, “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?”

He says, “remove the beam from your own eye first.” 

It reminds us, when we’re feeling judgmental, to think before we speak and be honest and humble about our own sinfulness. But does this mean that we need to turn a blind eye to other people’s behavior even when it is clearly immoral? No. God has taught us right from wrong and sin from virtue. Though we need to focus on our own sinfulness and not others. Sometimes their immoral behavior is displayed before us, in which case, we must recognize that if the behavior is against God’s commandments, the behavior is wrong. But we judge the behavior and not the person. We leave the judgment of the person up to God, since he alone knows the person’s heart.

Though the scripture readings call us to self-examination of what is in our hearts, they also caution us to be observant of what things and what people of which we surround ourselves. In the Gospel, Jesus cautions us to know a tree by the fruits it produces. A good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad fruit. Of course, Jesus isn’t teaching us how to manage an orchard. He speaks of spiritual good fruit or spiritually harmful bad fruit. 

Two trees from the Sacred Scripture come to my mind when I hear Jesus’ words about the tree that produces good fruit and the tree that produces bad fruit. One tree I’m thinking of is the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden of which Adam and Eve ate. Their eating from that tree produced the bad fruit of sin and death entering our world. I’m also thinking of the tree of the cross on which Jesus was hung and produced the good fruit of salvation and life. 

The tree and the fruit in the garden looked pleasing and tempting to Adam and Eve, but what the fruit produced was frightening and destructive of life. The tree of the cross looked frightening and destructive of life, but what it produced was beautiful and life giving.

Returning to the thought of how Ben Sirach shared the wisdom of God in the Old Testament times to protect the Jewish people from falling victim to the errors of the Greek culture, we need the wisdom of the Cross and the presence of the Holy Spirit to keep us from falling victim to the errors of present-day culture. In practical terms, this means surrounding ourselves with the good elements of our culture as well as immersing ourselves in Christ’s teachings and his Church and surrounding ourselves with good people who are good influences on us. It also means avoiding things like immoral entertainment and bad influences that poison our thoughts and hearts. For parents, this means being aware of who their children are hanging out with, what they are being taught and how they are being entertained and then being directive in guiding their children along the right path.

Let us pray then, that by God’s grace we will be good trees producing good fruits for the sake of God’s Kingdom.