Monday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, June 20, 2022

Matthew 7, 1-5

Jesus said to his disciples: “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

The Lord continues to deliver his Sermon on the Mount, a summary of his moral teachings.  It is interesting to compare St. Matthew’s Gospel with that of St. John.  St. Matthew presents little of the Lord’s teaching on doctrine, such as on the divinity of the Son and his equality with the Father, but concentrates on his moral teachings.  John’s Gospel presents the Lord’s teachings on his identity as the Son, equal to the Father, and other doctrine, and shows how his moral teaching derived from those truths.  Matthew’s presentation reflects his understanding of Jesus, the Son of God, as fulfilling the roles of Moses and Elijah, who taught and defended the Law to the Israelites.  John’s emphasis was motivated by his desire to show the Judean believers in God that they were Jews no longer, but Christians, and that they had no further need to worship in the Temple, circumcise, or follow the purification laws.

“Stop judging, that you may not be judged.”  The Greek word translated as “judging” here is krino, and here it means “to try as a judge”, “to sentence”, and “to condemn”.  The Lord is saying, Stop acting like a judge when you are not one.  A judge, in a proper trial, will hear various witnesses and question the defendant.  We see this in Pilate’s deliberations over Jesus.  But the Lord is rebuking those who give their judgment of a thing or a person even though the person has not looked at all the evidence or talked to all the witnesses.  One way to describe this is “jumping to conclusions”.  The Lord is not saying that we should not form opinions and judgments.  In fact, doing this is an essential part of life.  But we must take in all the information we can before doing so.  Sometimes people express a fear of “being judged”.  They say, Don’t judge me.  They say this out of the guilt that comes from their own recognition that what they are doing is wrong.  The Christian will not judge the person but can judge an action or series of actions.  The reason why people engage in such actions may be a mystery even to themselves.  The Lord tells us to not judge that we may not be judged.  He speaks of judging in two senses here: the imperfect judgments we render when we do not have all the facts, and the perfect judgment God will render for us at the time of our death.

“The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”  This is another way of saying, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7, 12).  The Lord elevates this common saying of ancient times to a higher meaning: As we treat others, so God will treat us.  It is sobering to think that how we treat the people around us will have eternal consequences for us.

“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?”  The first part of the verse should read, How do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye.  It is not a question of why, but of how.  We see the splinter in our brother’s eye because we are looking for it.  Our brother turns to us and tells us that he has a splinter and can we help him get it out.  We turn our full attention to him and look carefully into his eye to find it so that we can remove it for him.  At the same time, if we have a splinter in our own eye, we will have a hard time assisting him.  We ought to ask someone else to do this.  Of course, helping our brother would be out of the question if we have a wooden beam sticking out of our eye, but if somehow we were not aware of this, we would make his situation worse.  How could we not be aware of our own beam?  Through denial of our own vulnerability to beams, that is, by firmly believing that we have a monopoly on truth, that we are perfect, that our way of doing something is the only way, and that there is something wrong with a person who has a different way of thinking.  The Lord rightly calls such a person a “hypocrite”.  This English word is derived from a Greek word that was used by the early translators of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek to translate a word that meant “godless”.  Today we only think of a hypocrite as saying one thing and doing another, but we need to think of this godless aspect too.  A person who professes a religion and acts against its precepts is a hypocrite — godless — in that they ignore what God commands, and show contempt for him.  This is a very terrible state.

“Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”  The Lord shows that it is possible for the “beam” to be removed from our eye.  But how can this be done?  If a person needs help removing a splinter from his eye, he will need help from others to remove the beam.  This is accomplished through spiritual counsel and by recourse to the Sacrament of Penance.  The tricky part, though, is admitting that one has a beam in one’s eye.  If the person himself does not recognize this, he is not likely to believe others when they inform him of this fact.  Arrogance reinforces itself.  What we all need is to humble ourselves and to realize that we are susceptible to all sorts of weaknesses, failures, and misapprehensions.  We must be more ready to listen than to speak and more ready to obey than to demand obedience.  To do this properly, we must fall in love with the Lord Jesus, and we can do this by meditating upon his love for us.  Sowing in love, we will reap love.