Monday in the Second Week of Lent

Luke 6, 36-38

Jesus said to his disciples: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

The Church presents to us this week exhortations of our Lord Jesus Christ on how we ought to live so as to be saved.

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  Our Father in heaven abounds in mercy for us, but we do not benefit from it because of the hardness of our hearts.  It is the same case as during a drought when the ground dries up completely.  If the rain that finally comes is a hard one, the water will flow off the ground without sinking in.  The ground does not benefit from the rain and the aquifers do not refill due to its own hardness, not to any fault of the rain.  We ought not to pray that God temper his mercy so that we can receive it a little at a time, but that our hearts may be prepared properly for the deluge of his mercy.  Likewise, we ought to be merciful to others as well, even if they do not benefit from our forgiveness because of their own hard-heartedness.  And it is a fact that while knowledge of having been forgiven may change a person for the better, the giving of mercy always does this for us when we forgive.  And to the extent that we become merciful, to that extent we make ourselves capable of receiving mercy.

“Stop judging and you will not be judged.”  The Greek verb translated here as “judging” has a wide range of meanings.  We often confuse the English word with having an opinion, but this is not what it means, and to give up having opinions would be dangerous even were it possible.  The Greek word has among its meanings, “to condemn” and “to accuse”.  The Fathers understood the Lord’s command here as concerning our usurping of his prerogative on the Last Day by condemning people to hell here and now.  That is, to consider another person, through the scarce evidence available to us in this passing world, as irrevocably lost.  We can think of this command as forbidding us to falsely accuse or condemn someone in our minds or in conversation with others.  We do this when we do not have all the facts as to a situation or a behavior and are motivated by malice.  This is different from, say, when St. Paul excommunicated a woman and her son living together as though married.  He confirmed that the pair were sinners who could not approach the altar for the sacraments in order to prevent scandal to others and to bring the man and woman to their senses.  He acts as a proper judge, appointed by God as an Apostle, dispensing justice.

“Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.”  God does this for us.  He gives us life and breath, faith, hope, and love.  His gifts so abound in our lives that we cannot count all of them.  As with mercy and forgiveness, the condition for receiving these gifts is for us to give.  That is, to give alms to the needy but also time and attention to those who are in need of these things.  A smile or a kind word can be a gift to someone who does not need money or food.  And we can always do great good by giving example of Christian life.  “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”  If we love God without measure and serve him to the fullest of our ability, then we will receive life without measure in its extent and in its ecstasy.