Monday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Once or twice I had a small splinter in my eye. It caused a little bit of pain and it tended to absorb me fully until I could get rid of it. It impacted on my ability to see things clearly and even to do the normal things. A friend was a help to me in locating the splinter and in having it removed. In the gospel reading, Jesus speaks of someone with a plank in their eye trying to take the splinter out of someone else’s eye. Whatever about a splinter, there is no possibility of our ever having a plank in our eye! Jesus often spoke in images that occasionally must have made people smile, as this image must have done. He wasn’t talking about physical splinters or planks. He was referring to people who set out to correct the faults of others, while being completely unaware of their own much more serious faults. It is not just a case of the blind leading the blind but of the totally blind leading the partially blind. We all have our faults and those faults prevent us from seeing others clearly. Jesus is saying that because none of us see others clearly, as clearly as the Lord sees them, we should be slow to try and correct their faults, slow to judge them. Because only the Lord can see into the heart of others, he alone can judge them fairly. The rest of us can only say, ‘Who am I to judge?’ The Lord wants us to focus on our own failings before focusing on the failings of others, but to do so in the awareness that he loves us with our failings. As Pope Francis was fond of saying, ‘I am a loved sinner’. The more aware we are of ourselves as loved sinners, the less likely we are to judge others.