Guarding the Tongue

Avoid quarrelsome words and anything that causes ill will; flee also every occasion of discord and strife. For if, as the apostle teaches, “the servant of the Lord must not quarrel,” how much more does this befit the handmaid of the Lord, whose mind ought to be the gentler, as her sex is the more modest and retiring. Keep your tongue from evil speaking, and put the bridle of the law on your mouth, so that you speak, if you speak at all, only when it would be a sin to be silent. Beware of saying anything that could justly be found fault with. A word once spoken is like a stone that has been thrown, so it should be thought over long before it is spoken. Blessed indeed are the lips that never say what they would wish to take back. [a]

The talk of a chaste mind ought itself to be chaste, the kind that always builds up the hearers rather than harming them, according to the apostle’s command when he says, “Let no corrupt talk come out of your mouth, but what is good for building up faith, so that it may give grace to those who hear.” Precious to God is the tongue that does not know how to form words except about divine things, and holy is the mouth from which heavenly words continually flow. By the authority of Scripture, silence those who slander the absent, as people with evil minds. For the prophet counts this too among the virtues of a perfect man: that in the presence of the righteous, the evil-minded man who brings charges against his neighbor that cannot be proved is brought down to nothing. It is not right for you to listen patiently to evil spoken against another, since you would not want others to do that when it is aimed at you. Certainly everything that goes against the Gospel of Christ is unrighteous, and that is what happens if you quietly allow something to be done to another that you would find painful if anyone did it to you. Train your tongue always to speak about those who are good, and lend your ears to the praises of good people rather than to the condemnation of the wicked.

See that all the good you do is done for God’s sake, knowing that for every such deed you will receive a reward only so far as you did it out of fear and love for him. Strive to be holy rather than to seem so, because it is no use being thought what you are not; and you take on the guilt of a double sin when you do not have what you are credited with having, and when you pretend to have what you do not have.