It’s hard to miss the meaning of the reading from Matthew (7:1-5) when Jesus is heard talking about judgment. His image of having a wooden beam in one’s eye and not noticing it is outlandish hyperbole by anyone’s reckoning. But it does capture our attention, which is the obvious purpose of Jesus, I suspect. The question at hand might rather be whether or not I notice the specks in my own eye. That seems to me the more difficult test. I can easily rub my eye and (perhaps) get rid of a speck—or grab some eye wash and blot it out. It may be too easy to find such a remedy. I still don’t want to think of a wooden beam…so how do I stop judging?
Whatever it takes to wake up the vagaries of your mind is the essential question here. What might you suggest to help others accept people without judging them? Do you judge yourself? If so, might that be a first step in changing your judgements of others? Instead of judging yourself or anyone else, why not try to just love without judging? You know: “Love the sinner, not the sin.” Then pray for the possibility to forgive—yourself and everyone else. It will be difficult but certainly worth the effort.
Speaking of antonyms (as I was doing yesterday), I have no choice but to choose love as the theme for today. Psalm 119 announces it when it declares: Blessed are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!” (vs.1-2), waking up those who have slept through the first reading from the second letter of John. In a clarion call that John sees as only a reminder of what God’s law proclaims, he says: “I ask you, not as if I were writing a new commandment but the one we have had from the beginning: let us love one another.” 