As a child, I often got into trouble at home. I had a tendency to take apart many different household items: radios, watches, vacuum cleaners, clocks. My curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see how things worked However, I was not very good at putting things back together. They never worked quite the same way again!
Today’s Scriptures urge us to do something like that—to open ourselves up, to look within and to examine whether our conduct is consistent with our baptismal faith, to see how we are “working” as disciples, if you will. While the readings contain a variety of vivid images, let’s together consider just one that is very practical.
The image of the splinter in a brother’s eye and the wooden beam in our own is a lesson in not judging other’s faults without first addressing our own worse faults. We are hypocrites when we seek to correct the faults of others, but are comfortable with our own. If we are truly concerned over the sins of others, we should have the same concern over our own sins.
This does not mean that we should never correct another. In fact in the 17th chapter of this Gospel of Luke and then in the 18th chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Our Lord instructs us on fraternal correction.
Here Our Lord urges us to have a “critical spirit” not with regard to others but ourselves. An honest self-examination or introspection is needed before we presume to point out the faults of others. We should never demand of others what we do not do ourselves. We should never presume to correct in others what we tolerate in ourselves.
We all have defects. The Italians have a proverb: “Anche il sole ha le sue macchie”—Even the sun has its spots” Only God is without defects, only God is perfect.
When we open ourselves and shine a light within, we often see that we spend an enormous amount of energy making up our minds about other people. Not a day goes by without somebody doing or saying something that stirs up within us the need to form an opinion about him or her. Only a humble person—and a humble person is one who knows the truth about themselves—who has looked within can correct another without humiliating another.
Today, finding ourselves at the door of the Holy Season of Lent, Jesus calls us to that introspection, that self-examination, that will free us from the “addiction” of needing to put people and things in their right place. Let’s pray for the grace of humility—that light that allows us to see the truth about ourselves before we judge others.
Meister Eckhart expressed it well: “The sinner of today is the saint of tomorrow. Therefore, unmindful of the sins and shortcomings of our neighbor, let us look to our own imperfections, surely forgetting what God has forgotten: sins truly repented. What God has forgotten, tis no business of ours to remember.”
