198. The importance of words
198. THE IMPORTANCE OF WORDS
Is divine grace always invisible and inaudible, or does it also sometimes attach to words?
The knowledge a man receives from God cannot be turned to another’s profit except by means of speech. And since the Holy Ghost does not fail in anything that pertains to the profit of the Church, He provides also the members of the Church with speech to the effect that a man not only speaks so as to be understood by different people, which pertains to the gift of tongues (or, more exactly, the interpretation of tongues), but also speaks with effect, and this pertains the grace of the word.
This happens in three ways.
First, in order to instruct the intellect, and this is the case when a man speaks so as to teach.
Secondly, in order to move the affections . . . This is the case when a man speaks so as to please his hearers, not with a view to his own favor but in order to draw them to listen to God’s word.
Thirdly, in order that men may love that which is signified by the word and desire to fulfill it, and this is the case when a man so speaks as to sway his hearers. In order to effect this, the Holy Ghost makes use of the human tongue as of an instrument; but He it is Who prefects the work within. Hence Gregory says: Unless the Holy Ghost fill the hearts of the hearers, in vain does the voice of the teacher resound in the ears of the body (II-II,177,1).
God created us as psychosomatic unities. Except for miraculous graces, our souls learn only through our bodies and sensory experience, and they communicate what they learn only through bodily and sensory means, usually words. (And, of course, deeds!)
Scripture targets the tongue as the most powerful of all the organs of the body, for evil or for good. (James 3 is a chapter-long essay on this one organ.) Words are weapons, for good or evil.
And God provides good weapons.
St. Thomas here seems to be thinking primarily of spoken words, but what he says applies equally to writing. He divides these graces into (I) the gift of tongues, which is a supernatural “charismatic” gift of the Holy Spirit, and (II) “the grace of the word”, which is a natural gift (“gift” and “grace” are almost identical terms) which comes in three forms corresponding to three good purposes of speech: (1) teaching the mind, (2) attracting and pleasing the affections, and (3) moving the will.
When he uses the term “heart”, St. Thomas follows scriptural rather than modern usage and usually means something closer to “will” than to “feelings” or “emotions”, for emotions fit into his category #2 rather than #3 above. The “heart” is that power whose characteristic act is to love, and St. Thomas defines love as an act of will: to love is to will the good of the other.
Words can influence all three powers of the soul—thinking, feeling, and willing—to either good or evil. Words are most adequate to their purpose in category #1, teaching the intellect; but words usually have the most powerful effect on the emotions and the will, because we are usually moved more by the emotions and the will than by the intellect.
The practical “bottom line” is this: be careful how you use these powerful weapons! God gave us two eyes and two ears but only one mouth, so that we could see and hear twice as much as we say.