Saint Luke 6: 39-42: The beam in the eye.
In today’s Gospel «the sermon on the plain» continues, with various recommendations, by way of comparisons:
– a blind man cannot guide the blind: they will both fall into the hole,
– a disciple will not be more than his teacher,
– We do not have to focus so much on the defects of others (a speck or blade in the other’s eye), but on our own (a beam): otherwise, we would be hypocrites.
They are recommendations related to the law of love that Jesus gave us yesterday. He who is taken as a guide must «see» well. The one who wants to go from disciple to teacher, the same. One and the other, if all they see are the defects of others, and not their own, things will go wrong. Seeing the speck in someone else’s eye and not seeing the beam in your own was a very common saying among Jews.
How easily we see the defects of our brothers, and what capacity we have to hide our own! That’s called being hypocritical. That is why it occurs to us to act as guides for others, when those who need guidance are us. And we want to be teachers, when we have not finished learning. And we go into giving advice and correcting others, when we are unable to honestly face our own failures.
Let’s do a little soul-searching today: don’t we tend to ignore our shortcomings, while we are always on the lookout to discover others’? Every time we remember the failures of others – with an immediate desire to comment on them with others – we should reason like this: What do I want so much to be a judge and prosecutor for my brothers? » This is called hypocrisy, one of the defects that Jesus criticized the most. We could use a clean mirror where we can look at ourselves: this mirror is the Word of God, which guides us day after day. To exercise a healthy self-criticism in our life.
Peace and good
Fr. Antonio Majeesh George Kallely, OFM
