Why Integrity Matters: Lessons from Scripture

Readings and Virtual Homily for Mass March 2, 2025, Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time; Lent's Attractions

Readings for Mass this Sunday

• Sirach 27:4-7

• Psalm 92:2-3, 13-16

• 1 Corinthians 15:54-58

• Luke 6:39-45

Dear Friends and Family,

A general theme of the importance of integrity informs today's readings, or at any rate, the first reading, the psalm and the passage from Luke.  Integrity is equated with, among other things, truthful speech and self-awareness.  In each of the three passages, moreover, the person with integrity is compared to a tree that bears good fruit (Sirach 27:6; Psalm 92:15; Luke 6:43-44).  

The passage from Sirach warns against judging by appearances, and advises us that "speech discloses the bent of a person's heart" (vs. 6).  This corresponds to Jesus' observation in the Gospel passage that "from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks" (vs. 45).  As "the furnace tests a potter's vessels," Sirach continues, "the test of a person is in conversation" (vs. 5); adding that people's faults appear "when they speak" (vs. 4).  

This emphasis on the importance of our words is necessary in any discussion of personal integrity.  If you stop to think about it, we are really only as good as our word.  If we keep our word, people know us and know that they can trust us.  If we do not keep our word, people cannot really know us -- except that is, as someone who is unreliable.  Our words must be lined up with our behavior, with our actions in the world, if they are going to be worth anything.  

Words exist to communicate -- they are stand-ins for reality.  If, for instance, I speak the words San Francisco Bay, an image appears in the minds of my hearers.  The image, of a large body of water along the California coast, is true; the words have produced an accurate impression.  The words, meant to convey the bay, do not produce an image of Lake Tahoe. 

Words do more than merely communicate -- they may be said to actually reveal reality to us.  The words San Francisco Bay reveal to us the reality that is that body of water.  They reveal the bay to us in a way that the words the Empire State Building do not; the words San Francisco Bay conform to the reality of that body of water.

To reflect just a bit further on this business of the significance of words...John tells us that Jesus is "the Word" of God (John 1:1).  When I ask my sophomores why John might so speak of Jesus, we inevitably get into a discussion of just what words are for.  When we reach the point where we can agree that words have a revelatory power -- the words "San Francisco Bay" evoke the reality of San Francisco Bay -- the teens suddenly get it.  Jesus is the "Word" that reveals God to us.  As Jesus himself puts it, if we have seen him, we have seen the Father (John 14:9). 

What is more, God spoke the universe into being through the Word -- that is, through the Second Person of the Trinity.  "Through him all things were made" we recite in the Nicene Creed; the Creed itself simply echoing John 1:3, Colossians 1:16 and Hebrews 1:2, all of which say God created the universe through the Second Person.  At the heart of reality we find -- a word; THE Word through whom reality, the universe itself, was spoken into existence.

This is why it is so important to tell the truth.  Lies are a direct and deliberate misuse of the very nature of words.  Words are meant to convey reality, not to distort it, not to hide it nor to confuse it.  It was through a lie, of course ("you shall be like gods" -- Genesis 3:5) that the human race fell, and Jesus himself intimates the destructive power of lies when he refers to Satan as "the father of lies" (John 8:44).  

That, for now, is enough, in terms of a disquisition on the power and revelatory clarity of words.  The readings also urge self-reflection and self-awareness as irreducible components of personal integrity.  And this consideration, of course, takes us right back to the power of the truthfully spoken word: If we are selfish at times, and can name the fault honestly, we have integrity.  If we can be lazy, haughty, dismissive, uncharitable, quick-tempered, ungenerous, lustful, gluttonous, greedy, unfair in judgment and so on, and we at the same time are able to name these faults and own them, we have integrity.  Integrity does not mean we are perfect.  It means we are honest.  Honest about our weaknesses as well as our strengths.  It is the person who excuses a fault with a self-flattering deception who lacks integrity.  

Jesus is crystal clear on this point: "Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?" (vs. 41).  Jesus rightly calls such people out as hypocrites, instructing them to reflect on their own failings, to own them and take responsibility for trying to combat them, before they go about trying to set anyone else right (vs. 42).   

Finally, there is beautiful imagery in Psalm 92 regarding the man or woman of integrity; there is a promise, a deep promise of good things to come for those who strive to live with integrity.  Here is the quote in its entirety.

The just shall flourish like the palm tree, shall grow like a cedar of Lebanon.  Planted in the house of the Lord, they shall flourish in the courts of our God.  They shall bear fruit, even in old age; they shall stay fresh and green, to proclaim, 'The Lord is just; my rock, in whom there is no wrong (vss. 13-16).  

One of the things I particularly like about this passage is the way it honors, in our youth-obsessed culture, advanced age and the blessings it can bring.  Integrity, the psalm assures us, deepens and strengthens with age; it keeps us fruitful and life-giving because it keeps us connected to the source of life itself.

Integrity is a big topic.  We could say a lot more about it here.  But again, as this is a Sunday homily and not a chapter in a book, I think I will leave off here.

Lent is just around the corner.  I don't always give something up in Lent, but I am planning to hold myself to what I call the "Venezuelan fast" most of the next seven weeks.  I typically eat one meal a day (dinner) and the Catholic guidelines for fasting (one regular meal and two smaller meals which together do not add up to a second) would actually have me eating MORE than I usually eat, if I followed them.   

So I don't follow them.  There have been Lents in the past where I said, "Forget about fasting -- on your regimen, it's impossible.  Find something else to give up instead."  But several years ago, maybe as far back as a decade, now that I am thinking of it, I said to myself, "Actually, you CAN fast.  Anyone can.  All it means is that you eat less than usual, and do so on a regular basis.  So...you typically eat one meal a day.  Plan to eat less than one meal a day four or five days a week."

This is what I call the Venezuelan fast -- because so many folks in that country are on it involuntarily.  I am meanwhile mulling something extra that I can do, during the season.  Whether or not I mark Lent with a fast, I always try to mark it with a little extra effort in some good direction or other.  It can be something as simple as twenty bucks a week to some good cause someplace.  

In any event I look forward to plunging into the season.  Lent, as I know I have said before, is my favorite liturgical season.  Part of that could be as simple as the fact that it coincides with my favorite months of the year.  But I think it goes deeper than that.  I inevitably associate Lent with the Triduum, with the Passion of the Lord, and despite all the Marian aspects to my piety, I am, at heart, passionist in my spirituality.  My favorite day of the year is Good Friday, and has been, since I was a little guy.   

Lenten Fridays period rank among my favorite days of the year.  I have deep and treasured memories of being in St. Joseph's in Marysville with my mom or grandmother or uncle, or all three, maybe with a sibling or two as well, on breezy Friday spring evenings, watching the priest and the altar servers as they made their way round the side aisles, leading us in the Stations of the Cross, then my favorite devotion.  (The Stations rank second with me, today, after the Rosary.)  

I think it was the heroism Jesus displayed that first Good Friday afternoon, that most deeply spoke to me.  Young as I was, I did not need to have explained to me that Jesus' physical suffering was unimaginable.  And his grace, his courage, his strength spoke deeply to me -- passionist at heart as I even then was.  

I hope, in any event, to get Lent off to a good strong start and maintain the momentum, as the season progresses.  "Bright sadness," a seminary professor of mine once described the atmosphere, the "feeling" of Lent.  I like that description.  It strikes me as apt.  

Gonna be it for this one.  My best wishes for the start of March.

I don’t have the March Mass schedule yet, but I do know this much about it: One, I have no Masses at St. Clement this first weekend of the month; two, if I have one the weekend of the 8-9, it will only be the 630 PM on Sunday the 9th, and I will confirm that, next e-mail, when I have the schedule.  

I will LIKELY have the 6 PM bilingual Mass on Ash Wednesday and I do have the 11 AM Mass, at St. Elizabeth Seton in Pleasanton, on Sunday, March 16.  

I'll have the full March schedule out with next e-mail.

Take care.  God Bless.

Love,

Fr. Brawn