8th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Fr. Vinner)
My brothers and sisters in Christ,
Jesus draws our attention to practical points of Christian living and challenges us to use our words as he used his in his preaching and healing ministry — to heal, to restore, and to bring back life, joy and hope. Today’s readings also instruct us to share our Christian life, love, and spiritual health by our words, and to avoid gossiping about, and passing rash, thoughtless and pain-inflicting judgments on others, thus damaging their good reputation and causing them irreparable harm.
In one of his daily sermons (on 19 May 2017), Pope Francis said, some people “use rigidness to cover weaknesses, sins, personality flaws, and they use rigidness to rank themselves above others.” The Pope suggested that people who are rigid about their faith tend to live double lives. On another occasion, the Pope said, concealed by rigidity there is always something else! That’s why Jesus uses the word ‘hypocrites!’ “They appear good because they follow the Law; but behind there is something that does not make them good. Either they’re bad, hypocrites or they are sick. They suffer!” he said.
Logs and specks
The gospel of today is still a continuation of the sermon on the plains in the Gospel of Luke that we started listening to two Sundays ago with the Beatitudes (Chapter 6 of Luke). Jesus words as usual are very sharp. They are very straightforward. In today’s language, Jesus’ words could be rendered as, “How can you get the sawdust out of your brother’s eye if you have an electric pole in yours?” It is plain enough that someone blinded by the log cannot help someone who has a speck in their eye. Jesus is pointing to a simple truth as I said in the introduction above, perhaps I can spot certain things in another person’s life precisely because I am guilty of the same sin – in probably a greater capacity. Therefore, before I take on the duty to “admonish sinners” – I need to deal with my own sinfulness!
Here is a story rather well-known in India attributed to Mahatma Gandhi…
A woman walked with her son many miles to come to Gandhi. She was very worried about her son’s health because he was eating too much sugar. She came to Gandhi and said, “Please, sir, can you tell my son to stop eating sugar.”
Gandhi looked at her and thought for a while and finally said, “Ok, but not today. Bring him back in two weeks time.”
She was disappointed and took her son home. Two weeks later she made that long journey again and went to Gandhi with her son.
Gandhi simply said to the boy, “You must stop eating sugar. It’s not good for your health, my boy!”
The woman was confused and asked him, “Gandhi, please tell me: why did you want me to wait two weeks to bring back my son, just to say this one sentence.”
Gandhi said, “Because before I could tell your son to stop eating sugar, I had to stop eating sugar first.”
It is said, the boy had such respect for Gandhi that he stopped eating sugar and lived a healthy life.
Jesus is suggesting that in deeper matters concerning our spiritual lives – in matters that are more than just eating sugar – it might not be so easy just to correct our behavior. The truth is all of us have our logs in our eyes. We need work at a deeper level, at our heart. We cannot appear good just by following the law; but we need to root out what is not good deep within us. We need to deal with the inner conflict within us.
Jesus says, “There is no sound tree that produces rotten fruit, nor again a rotten tree that produces sound fruit. … A good man draws what is good from the store of goodness in his heart; a bad man draws what is bad from the store of badness. For a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart.”
Christianity is a religion of the heart. We need to work at our heart level. This implies a set of movements in our Christian life: from saying prayers to praying; from being right to being good; from looking outward to looking inward!
We should avoid judging others because 1) No one except God is good enough to judge others because only God sees the whole truth, and only He can read the human heart. Hence, only He has the ability, right and authority to judge us. 2) We do not see all the facts or circumstances or the power of the temptation which has led a person to do something evil. 3) We are often prejudiced in our judgment of others, and total fairness cannot be expected from us, especially when we are judging those near or dear to us. 4) We have no right to judge because we have the same faults as the one, we are judging and often in a greater degree (remember Jesus’ funny example of a man with a log in his eye trying to remove the dust particle from another’s eye?) St. Philip Neri commented, watching the misbehavior of a drunkard: “There goes Philip but for the grace of God.” Abraham Lincoln said that the only one who has the right to criticize is the one who has the heart to help. 5) Hence, we should leave all judgment to God, practice mercy and forgiveness, and pray for God’s grace to get rid of all forms of hypocrisy in our lives. Let us remember the warning of saints: “When you point one finger of accusation at another, three of your fingers point at you.”
May God Bless us.
FR. S.Vinner HGN