Word to the Wise
Monday, June 22, 2020 - Monday in the 12th Week in Ordinary Time
[2 Kgs 17:5-8, 13-15a, 18 and Matt 7:1-5]"Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother's eye." [Matthew]
JUNE 22, [St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, martyrs]
I have mentioned before that the Sermon on the Mount can make one squirm a lot. The passage in the gospel today is no exception! When it showed up during a retreat or parish mission, I would go around the area to look for a piece of wood with a lot of splinters and pass it around the congregation while I was preaching. Jesus' image is truly challenging. The beam that could be in our own eye is composed of many splinters!
Just how sensitive we are to Jesus' words might be illustrated by Pope Francis' reply to a journalist on the papal plane when asked something about gay people. The pope replied, "Who am I to judge?" The reaction from some quarters indicated that many thought they (and presumedly, the pope] had been divinely appointed to do exactly that!
My father was a District Judge in Louisiana. One of the symbols of that office (along with the "scales of justice") is the wooden gavel with which order and decisions are announced in court. Sometimes, in the sacrament of reconciliation, I tell folks who accuse themselves of judgmentalism to take their "gavels" out into the yard and bury them. Then, before passing judgment, they would have to remember where they buried the gavel and then go and dig it up before rendering judgment. That process can give them time to think it over!!
Wisdom coming from the Holy Spirit can help us to make the "judgments" that life requires from time to time. That wisdom will tell us it is not a good thing to be wasting time looking for the splinters in other peoples' eyes! AMEN