WALK  THE  TALK

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this December 29^th  is, “Walk The Talk.”

I could tackle two themes in today’s gospel: Is there anything we’re waiting for - something or someone we have unfinished business with?; swords that pierce the heart can reveal various thoughts and learnings. [Cf. Luke 2: 22-35]

Instead however, last night I decided to go with the simpler theme: walk the talk. It’s a basic message - a cliché to be honest.

I think that spells out what John is saying in his First Letter 2: 3-11.

Talking the talk is important - especially to oneself - but if it doesn’t flow into action, then we can be labeled, “All talk.”

Or we ourselves  - or others - will say, “Talk is cheap.”

LISTEN TO JOHN AGAIN

John says, “Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar….”

John says that those who say they are in the light, yet hates their brother or sister, is still in the dark….”

In other words, “Walk the Talk.”

In other words, “Action speaks louder than words.”

That’s something we have been hearing all our lives.

TO BE HONEST: START WITH OURSELVES

But to be honest, I don’t know about you, but I make many self promises in the morning - about what I am going to do that day - but by evening, I have to admit, I never got to them.

So I would assume that a key thing is pause more - realize more - that if we keep on giving our word and then we don’t keep it - we are lying to ourselves, we are kidding ourselves, we are weakening the sacredness of words - those personal decisions we spell and verbalize to ourselves.

That’s words to oneself. Giving our word to others is another issue.

I have not done my homework - that is - I haven’t done enough thinking to make the following statement: “If we keep on breaking our word to ourselves - we’ll be doing that a lot more to our neighbor.

Based on all the sayings, there must be a lot of people who experienced the realithy that some people are all talk.

There is the Chinese proverb: “Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

We’ve all heard the same message in the English proverb,  “Wishes don’t wash dishes.”

Or as Anonymous put it, “After all is said and done, a lot more will have been said than done.”

CONCLUSION

But some people do - and we learn a lot more about people from their hands  - their actions - that we learn from their mouth and their words.

Robert Brault, in his poem entitled, “A Poem Missing the Word Woulda” goes like this,

“A nod,
a bow,
and a tip of the lid
to the person
who coulda
and shoulda
and did.”