8th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Fr. Simham)
Today’s readings rigorously confront our inherent desire to control and our very human self-absorption; When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear; so do one’s faults when one speaks. Our prayers are like in fact the shaking of the sieve of our lives. When we open our lives to God through prayer we invite the presence and action of God’s Spirit into the inner sanctuary of our being; Sirach describes this experience thus: As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace, so in tribulation is the test of the just. The tribulations that follow every human being in life are the furnace of trials that test our faith.
Today’s gospel is the third and final section of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. There are actually four parables in Luke’s gospel, three of which we read today. They are all about how to be a good disciple. They are all very much helpful, challenging, tool guiding us towards an honest and humble acceptance of ourselves. To admit what is wrong is not to punish ourselves but to invite God’s transformative purifications into our lives.
In today’s gospel we read, The blind cannot lead the blind. And a disciple cannot be a good disciple unless he or she has learned from the teacher. Everyone who is fully trained is like the teacher who knows how to cure the blind. Before you can be a good disciple and teach others you must take care of yourself. Do not try to take a speck out of your brother’s eye until you have taken the board out of your own. Finally, only when you have purified yourself then only you can produce the good works that the teacher requires. Discipleship asks us to produce good deeds. But to produce them requires the integrity and purity of heart found in the teacher. When people see your good deeds they will know that this is because you have a good heart.
I remember the story of a young man who wanted to change the whole world in his twenties. All is not well with the world, let me change it” said he in his twenties. He tried and tried and in his forties realized that he cannot change the world. So he said “ If I can’t change the world let me at least change my country.” He tried and tries and realized in his sixties that he cannot change the country. So he said “If not my country let me at least change my town” So he tried and tried to change his town and in his eighties realized even that is not possible. Then he said “In my eighties let me at least change my family”. He tries and tried to change his family and in his nineties on his death bed realized that he failed to even change his family. So he said, “ I can’t even change my family let me at least change myself before I die.” But behold the angel of death was knocking on his door saying his time was up. As he was dying he said “if and only if I had tried to change myself first , there would have been at least one person who is changed.”
Friends, this is lesson from today’s gospel. Change yourself first before you try to change others. Remove the log from your eye before you try to remove the spec from your brother’s eye.
God bless you.
Fr. Showreelu Simham