WITH ONE TONGUE

 A SERMON FOR WHITSUNDAY

Did you ever wonder how Adam and Eve communicated with each other?  Did they just grunt and gesticulate like the Neanderthals in the movies?  Or did they use a language?  If so, what language, and how did they learn that language?  These may be idle thoughts, and no doubt, theologians and linguists have considered the origins of human speech from their own diverse perspectives.  What we do know, however, is that they did indeed speak.  In the Book of Genesis there are several examples of Eve speaking with the serpent, and of both Adam and Eve speaking to God, perhaps some form of linguistic telepathy between humans and supernatural beings.  But between Adam and Eve themselves you won’t find a single word passed between them, which, I understand, is still a common occurrence among some married couples today.

However, we do know that Adam did have the use of language, because Genesis informs us that “Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.”  We can be sure that if he knew the words for shrimp and cow, he had names also for things like fire, water, and plenty of other words too.  And if he knew those words, he would have communicated them to his wife Eve, so that they could come to understand what the other was saying.  Soon Eve would be able to ask Adam to pass the ketchup, and Adam would learn never to tell Eve that her dress makes her look fat.  And thus we have the beginnings of human language which were passed down to their descendants.

That worked very well for a while and people said a lot of things to each other, some good, some bad, just like it is today.  The difference back then was that everyone totally understood what everyone else was saying, because they all spoke the same language, and so it was for hundreds and hundreds of years, well past the Great Flood of Noah and for many generations more.  Genesis Chapter 11, first verse: “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” 

But then something happened.  Men learned how to build with bricks and mortar and very soon they desired to build something that would reach high up into the heavens, a tower that would show God how clever and powerful mankind had become.  This was the great tower of Babel, but it would not be a great tower for long.  God was not happy with their declaration of pride and strength.  God never is.  As always he seeks “an humble and contrite heart,” not acts of pride and defiance.  And by the way, in passing, and on that subject, let me mention one of this past week’s acts of pride and defiance, this one committed by no less than the United States Embassy to the Vatican, which to mark the beginning of Gay Pride month, proudly and defiantly displayed the rainbow-colored pride flag from its rooftop down the road from St. Peter’s Basilica in the center of the Holy City of Rome.  It’s part of the increasingly blatant plan to test the power and authority of Christ’s Church, which has already capitulated in this and so many other ways.  If this display of evil was designed to upset the leaders of the conciliar Church, it will fail, simply because most of them, including their “beloved Holy Father” will see the flag and be tickled pink…

God will no doubt deal eventually with such acts of defiance against his authority as he did with that Tower of Babel.  God’s answer to these proud and rebellious men was to “go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.”  He scattered them throughout the earth, and there they settled, each with their own form of speech, or language.  And so it was from that time forth.

This brings us to today’s account of that first Whitsunday, when pilgrims from all over the world congregated in the Holy City of Jerusalem for the important Jewish feast of Pentecost.  How were the apostles, who were not exactly linguistic experts, going to make any impression on this huge multitude of Jews with their various languages, and convert any of them to the holy faith of Christ and his new Church?  How could they possibly understand what the Apostles were saying?  Well, just as God could so easily confound the language of the men at Babel, so too could he just as easily restore their understanding on Pentecost Sunday.  Through the Holy Ghost, he gave the apostles a very special charism to speak in tongues.

We hear a lot about people speaking in tongues these days.  It refers to certain Pentecostal sects, some of which have been able to infiltrate the Conciliar Church, whereby people will suddenly stand up in the middle of a service and start shouting out words in a nonsensical gibberish that nobody can understand.  It beggars the mind how otherwise intelligent people could ever believe that God would perform or condone such a “wonder” for no other reason than for the speaker to make a fool of himself.  On Pentecost, though, there was a reason.  In fact, it was the most valid of all reasons, that the souls of men may be saved by hearing the words of the Gospel.  And so God performed the miracle that everyone who heard the apostles speak that day, heard them in their own language and were able to understand what they were saying.

Not only were they able to hear and understand the Gospel of Christ expounded to them in words they could understand, but the very fact that they could all understand them in their diverse languages solidified and confirmed their conversion.   It was a miracle.  No matter where in the world they came from, they each heard and understood in their own language, everything the apostles were saying.  For the first time since the Tower of Babel, mankind was able to understand once more in the same language.

The Church was born that day, and very soon, she learned the importance of having one universal language that all men would understand.  She adopted the common language of Latin.  Latin was the language spoken throughout the Roman Empire, which pretty much corresponded to the entire known world of that time, and so provided a means of communication which all men would know and understand.  Latin continued to be used for nearly two thousand years, in the liturgy of the Church, her official documents, and in her universities.  And it is no coincidence that it would be in the 1960s, that age of rebellion against all moral, spiritual and civil authority, that the use of Latin would be discarded and abandoned.  The false teachers in the Church at that time thought they could improve upon the Mass of all time, the traditional apostolic Mass passed down through the ages.  They thought in their pride they could build something better, a whole new edifice built to the glory of man and not God, a modern-day Tower of Babel.  Today, hardly anyone knows Latin, and it is rarely taught in the schools.  With this whole new age of defiant rebellion against God, we have reverted to the times of Babel.  God has scattered his people so that the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” is no longer “one.”  As soon as we lost the use of the common language of Latin, we lost the unity that went with it.  We see this very well today, when Conciliar Archbishop Cordeleone of San Francisco publishes a decree that Nancy Pelosi must be refused Communion because of her publicly sinful support of abortion, and then the very next day, she is given Communion in another church in Washington.  Where is Church Unity?  Real Church Unity, not the fake joining together of truth and falsehood that they like to call Church Unity.

The current leader of the Conciliar Church, their pope Francis, manages to deny the faith in whatever language he speaks, so his lack of Latin is no great loss in his case.  But to restore the Catholic faith worldwide, we must be committed to the restoration also of that common language which will pave the way for the truth to be once more expounded among the nations of the world, and we may all hear the Church speak again with a single voice “the wonderful works of God.”