OT VIII [C]: (Sir 27:4-7; Ps 92:2-3; 13-16; I Cor 15:54-58; Lk 6:39-45)

There’s the story of the conscientious wife who tried very hard to please her ultra-critical husband but failed regularly. He always seemed the most cantankerous at breakfast. If the eggs were scrambled, he wanted them poached; if the eggs were poached, he wanted them scrambled. One morning, with what she thought was a stroke of genius, the wife poached one egg and scrambled the other and placed the plate before him. Anxiously she awaited what surely this time would be his unqualified approval. He peered down at the plate and snorted, “Can’t you do anything right, woman? You’ve scrambled the wrong one!”

In today’s Gospel taken from the Sermon on the Plain given in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus condemns our careless, malicious and rash judgments about the behavior, feelings, motives or actions of others by using the funny examples of one blind man leading another blind man and one man with a log stuck in his eye trying to remove a tiny speck from another’s eye.

We have no right to criticize and judge others: The first reason Jesus gives us is we have no right to criticize unless we ourselves are free of faults. That simply means that we have no right to criticize at all, because “there is so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us that it is hard for any of us to find fault with the rest of us.” It means that the task of fraternal correction (removing specks, etc.) should not be attempted without prior self-examination, though the disciple need not be completely without imperfections before the process can begin.

A member of a monastic order once committed a fault. A council was called to determine the punishment, but when the monks assembled it was noticed that Father Joseph was not among them. The superior sent someone to say to him, “Come, for everyone is waiting for you. So, Father Joseph got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water, and carried it with him. When the others saw this they asked, “What is this, father?” The old man said to them, “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the error of another?”

People who are willing to complain about others in their absence are reluctant to do so to their faces. A preacher, capitalizing on this fact, devised an effective way of handling such critics. He kept a special book labeled, “Complaints of Members Against One Another.” When one of them would tell him about some fault of a fellow parishioner, he would say, “Well, here’s my complaint book. I’ll write down what you say, and you can sign your name to it. When I see that person, I’ll take up the matter with him.” That open ledger, and the critic’s awareness of his own faults, always had a restraining effect. Immediately the complainer would exclaim, “Oh, no, I couldn’t sign anything like that!” In 40 years, that book was opened a thousand times, but no entry was ever made. 

1)We need to avoid hypocrisy: Let us acknowledge the hypocrisy we all live every day. Ignoring the glaring faults of our own, we point the finger of accusation, and whisper about them, and say, “How could they?” instead of asking “How could we?” We must look to our own sins first. As a disciple of Jesus Christ, I must be honest with myself. If I have trouble seeing my sins, and my failures, I have to go to Jesus and ask Him to point them out to me through prayer and through His Word.

2) We should stop judging others harshly and unreasonably 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 right and authority to judge us. 2) We are often prejudiced in our judgment of others, and total fairness cannot be expected from us. 3) We do not see all the facts, the circumstances or the power of the temptation, which have led a person to do something evil. We need to stop judging a book by its cover. 4) We have no right to judge others because we have the same faults and often to a more serious degree than the person we are judging. St. Philip Neri commented, watching the misbehavior of a drunkard: “There goes Philip but for the grace of God.”

3) Hence, we should leave all judgment to God and practice mercy and forgiveness, remembering the advice of saints: “When you point one finger of accusation at another, three of your fingers point at you.” Let us pay attention to the Jewish rabbi’s advice: “He who judges others favorably will be judged favorably by God.