Friday in the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, September 13, 2024

Luke 6, 39-42

Jesus told his disciples a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.”

There are actually two distinct parables in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass.  Jesus first tells one involving the blind leading the blind, a well-known and oft referenced figure.  But let us ask the question, Why would a blind man allow another blind man to lead him anywhere?  It would seem clear to anyone that if a blind man needed to go somewhere, he would find a sighted person to lead him.  There are three basic reasons why he might follow another blind man: 1) he did not know the other was blind, either through his own ignorance or the other’s deception; 2) he trusts the other blind man to lead him somewhere, perhaps relying on his greater experience of getting around; 3) the blind man feels himself to have no choice: he needs to go somewhere and there is no other option (to his mind) than to follow another blind man.  In interpreting this parable, we can understand that, in the first case, a person searching for God follows another person (or religion) who seems sound enough, but in fact cannot lead him to God.  Because the first blind man does not do his due diligence he winds up in the “pit” of true darkness.  He has followed false religions or philosophies to their end.  In the second case, the first blind man knows that the one he has chosen to lead him to his destination is also blind.  Nevertheless, he chooses to follow him.  The other may have persuaded him with assurances of his skill in getting around.  But this winds up as a disaster also, and the first blind man has greater blame for his final situation because he knew what he was choosing.  Here, we see what happens to a person for whom all religions are the same and that no one really knows the truth, which may not be knowable anyway.  In the third case, the blind man only knows other blind men.  He has heard that most people can see and could help him get around, but he never attempts to meet them.  Asking a sighted person for help is not an option, then.  But he needs to get to a certain destination and he despairs and goes with another blind man.  Here we have the situation of the sinner who has always followed the devil.  The blind man at some point seeks happiness or enlightenment, but refuses to go to those who could provide it, and so chooses a worse darkness instead.

“No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher.”  St. Luke places this saying of the Lord here, but it is really separate from the preceding parable and the succeeding one.  The Lord is teaching his disciples that they can be like him if they allow themselves to be “fully trained” by him.  That is, they cannot go to anyone else — a Pharisee, for instance — to be trained so that he can be “like” Jesus.  Only Jesus can make his followers to be like him. 

“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?”  This is another oft referenced figure of the Lord’s, though most of the people who refer to it are not Christians.  This makes their use of it ironic.  For us it is necessary to think as the humble servant does: that a miscue occurred not because of bad directions but because we did not follow them properly.  We should be quicker to blame ourselves than another.  This allows us to examine the facts in the case and come up with a correct understanding.  Perhaps it was a matter of faulty directions, or maybe they really were improperly carried out.  But blaming the other person leads us to seek evidence that only validates our position.  And so if we perceive a person to be unjust, rather than cast blame right away, we ought to make sure of our facts.  We should humbly allow for the possibility that we might be wrong about any given perception.  Humility will bring us very close to Jesus.