Glory to Jesus Christ. Today's Gospel, which
is taken from the selections from the Gospel
of St. Matthew, which we see being read now in
the summertime, we see two miracles that Jesus
performs. The two blind men to whom he gives
sight, and then the man who couldn't speak, and
Jesus... casts out the demon, so to speak, and
he's able to speak again, or to speak for the
first time. This prompts me, and I would suggest
you as well, to thank God for the two gifts that
he has given to us, the gift of speech and the
gift of sight. Today's gospel, I should say,
before I get too far into that, there's a consistent
interpretation about these blind men that the
fathers see the irony that these blind men have
spiritual vision and they can call Jesus son
of David, which is a messianic title. So they
acknowledge him to be the Messiah and it's the
grumbling Pharisees. that are in the audience
that they won't accept that. As a matter of fact,
they're contemptuous words. He casts out demons
by the prince of demons. How terrible to attribute
to evil the good work that's performed. But again,
these gifts that God has given to us, the gift
of vision and the gift of speech. Vision. We
take that so much for granted. But then we know
that there are some people, and I think of one
person in particular. There's a young girl about
10 or 12 years old. She's in one of our parishes.
As a matter of fact, she's the daughter of our
priest who's in Eureka, California. And she has
a medical condition. about which the doctors
can't correct by surgery. And she's in danger
of perhaps eventually going blind. So her name
is Monica, and I would commend Monica to your
prayers to join them with mine and other people
in the diocese that God will continue to give
her the gift of vision. That vision, as I said,
is a gift that God has given to us that we take
for granted. This past week, I took my driver's
renewal test, and I passed the vision test, but
the written test is another matter. I passed
it, but don't underestimate those when you come
up for your renewal. The gift of speaking. Two
instances that I can mention to you. When I was
growing up in our neighborhood, there were two
kids that we played with, and their parents couldn't
speak. They couldn't make noises, and the children
understood what the parents could make, and I
remember them vividly. how they would make these
noises and communicate through noises rather
than the normal manner of communication, which
is speech. And then the other one, which occurred
more recently, actually when we were still in
Michigan, doorbell rang one afternoon and Matushka
went to get it. And, of course, I was in another
room. When she finished, I asked her, well, what
was that? She said, well, there's a fellow here.
I bought these two soup bowls. And I thought,
why do you want to buy soup bowls? And the fellow
who was at the door had a card, and he said,
I'm mute. I cannot speak. And I sell these to
try and make a living. And I thought, boy. I
don't know how I would have, I might have said
no thank you. But every time I use those soup
bowls, I think of that incident. But how we can
abuse these gifts of vision and speech. Vision,
of course, to look at things we shouldn't look
at. And of course, that doesn't need any elaboration.
More frequently, I think, is dirty looks and
stink eye. That's a young kid's expression that
I don't think I had heard until recently. How
that can really hurt you if someone gives you
a dirty look or a stink eye. How much nicer it
is when we're tempted to give someone a dirty
look to sort of smile and nod, something like
that. The tongue is another thing. How often
we can sin with our tongue. The scriptures say
rather often that the tongue is sharper than
any two -edged sword and how we can use that
tongue to praise God, to say nice things rather
than to be malicious. You've probably heard that
once in a while we run into in our life, it's
a rare person, but someone that you can say,
I've never heard him or her say a bad word about
anyone. Doesn't that sort of make me feel bad
that there are people like that? Of course, it
should be an inspiration for us to watch what
we say. If we don't have something good to say
about someone, better not to say it at all. Even
simple things like griping. Do you know what
arping means? That's a word that I've learned
out here from the Urban Dictionary of all things.
It's from AARP, retired people. Arping is a person...
usually an elderly person who's constantly complaining
about things that he can't do anything about.
That's arping. Now, I imagine arping isn't a
sin in and of itself, but who wants to be around
someone who's arping all the time? Again, how
we use our tongue. We ask the Lord to... guard
our sight, to guard our lips. Just this morning
I was reading Psalm 17, and one of the verses
is, If thou testest me, thou wilt find no wickedness
in me. My mouth does not transgress. Oh, if only
I could and we could say that more frequently.
To use our tongue to praise God. to praise other
people, to use our vision, to read the scriptures,
to study, to thank God especially for these two
gifts that we again take for granted, the gift
of sight and the gift of speech. And we ask God
that he will allow us to use these two precious
gifts that he has given to us. to his praise
and glory forever and ever. Amen.