Word to the Wise
Monday, March 17, 2025 - 2nd Week of Lent - Mon
[Dan 9:4b-10 and Luke 6:36-38]"O Lord, we are shamefaced, like our kings, our princes, and our fathers, for having sinned against you. But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!" [Daniel] "Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you, a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you." [Luke]
MARCH 17 MONDAY IN THE 2ND WEEK OF LENT [ST. PATRICK]
My father was a district judge in Louisiana. On one of his birthdays, my siblings and I gifted him with a HUGE gavel - that much smaller wooden hammer that is one of the symbols of the office of a judge (or chairman). It was not the one he took with him to the courtroom, to be sure! But I do use the image of the gavel on occasion when I hear someone accuse themselves in the Sacrament of Reconciliation of being "judgmental." Most of us would feel rather foolish walking around each day with a gavel in our hands, but it seems an awful lot of us do just that! So, I tell the penitent to take their gavel out in the yard and bury it so that when they feel judgmental, they have to go and dig up the gavel before they can pass judgment! That is a real challenge when the gavel is inside us!! But Jesus is challenging us to lay the gavel aside and not hammer it down!
The Book of Daniel and the Gospel According to Luke today tells us to examine our own need for compassion and forgiveness before we determine someone else's need for it. How big is our gavel, and how big a hole would we have to dig to bury it? AMEN