Chapter LXVI: Of Evil Conversations

ALL that has been said in regard to watching carefully the eyes applies as well to the ears and the tongue. There is a vast amount of talk, which we may flatter ourselves is innocent, but which is extremely hurtful to the soul. To speak sometimes of beaux and getting married is, I suppose, unavoidable, and need not have any harm in it; but it would seem that girls can hardly get together without their conversation being entirely taken up with these things. If they are ever so long with one another, or ever so often, it would seem that this one subject never grows wearisome or gets worn out.

“Well, what harm is there in that?” A great deal. If nothing worse, it fills the mind with matters too engrossing and enticing to leave us free for the service of God. It is like setting up an idol in our hearts and falling down to worship it, instead of the living and true God. If God condemns the love of riches as idolatry because it distracts and turns us aside from better things, much more must He condemn us for allowing earthly love to occupy and take up our minds, since this is a passion still more dangerous and powerful to steal our hearts away from Him.

Such conversations are likely to be hurtful and evil, even if they do not touch upon anything positively sinful, but how difficult it is to restrain them within bounds!

“The poison of asps,” says St. James, “is under their lips.” The asp was a most deadly serpent, but very small, and his bite not painful, so that the person bitten was taken off almost before he was aware of his wound.

It is this conversation about marriage, this joking and merriment about beaux, which inflicts deadly wounds on the innocent soul so silently and quietly that it is destroyed almost before it is aware of its danger.

Keep your tongue from joining in such conversations, and turn away your ears that they listen not, if you want to escape the infection and contagion which is all about. Imitate the conduct of physicians who have to attend the sick in hospitals. They carry with them smellingbottles, and the instant they perceive the evil odor of contagion they strive to counteract it by breathing the perfume. Turn the conversation to something else as cunningly as you can; if you cannot do that, take no part in it and do not listen to it, but lift up your souls in some short prayer to God to preserve you. Go away as soon as you can, so as to be removed from all danger.

The Holy Scripture says that for every “idle word” we shall be called to judgment. Now, by “idle words” is meant, not innocent merriment and cheerful conversation which simply passes away time — for this has a good end, which is to unbend the mind, and prevent melancholy and sadness, and to promote good-feeling and kindness — but just this kind of talk, which seems not so very bad at first sight, but which has the sting and poison of hell in it.

And how is this talk often described? By such expressions as these: “Oh, I have spoken a few pleasant words”; or, “some funny words”; or, “a little joking”; or, “a few double-meaning words.” What a fearful stupor of soul and deadness of conscience here is!

“A few double-meaning words!” These double-meaning words are two-edged swords. If you saw a little baby toddling about with an open knife in his little hands, you would spring with alarm to take it away. Here is a soul in blindness and darkness carrying a sharp sword of destruction for its own ruin.

Beware of double-meaning words against purity; they are worse in some respects than more vulgar and coarse ones, for the last disgust and repel us, while the former make a deep impression on the mind by their wit, and rankle in the heart, infecting it with filthy and unclean ideas.

Show your displeasure plainly as soon as you perceive that another is aiming to insinuate anything improper under the cover of a double-meaning word. Sometimes a dead silence will be the best rebuke, or a sudden deafness may seize you. If the thing is repeated, you may show your displeasure more decidedly. There is generally some shame and sense of decency even in the most hardened; and if such attempts are put down in the outset, it may prevent a great deal of trouble and sin afterwards, and be the means of making such people more careful how they expose their own vulgar and coarse minds to public gaze. The wicked are and must be abashed in the presence of virtue and purity.

Keep, then, a guard on your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your hands, and all your senses, that you may be far from any occasion to sin against this holy virtue; and God will give you great graces.

Remember the admirable answer once made by a king. King Roger kept his eyes under such complete control that, although constantly meeting people, for the space of three years it was observed that he never looked a woman in the face. A person who had observed this asked him the reason, and got this reply: “When a man does what he can, and avoids the occasion of sin, then God on his part does what He can, and preserves him from sin; but when a man rashly throws himself in the way of danger, then he is justly deserted by God, and permitted to fall into sin.”