About today
Readings
St. Aloysius Gonzaga
Genesis 12: 1-9. Happy the people whom the Lord has chosen to be His own – Ps 32 (33): 12-13, 18-20, 22. Matthew 7: 1-5.
Do not judge and you will not judge judged
Today’s gospel bears one of the great basic Christian ideas: “Do not judge lest you be judged”. Jesus conveys the idea in a brilliant style. What begins with a stern tone (“… the measure you give will be the measure you get”) turns into an extravagant dimension when Jesus presents the comical image of a person attempting sensitive ophthalmic surgery perform (“take the stain off your neighbor’s eye”) while he suffers from something like a telegraph pole in his own eye. Jesus was a genius of both love and language, and he used language to shake hypocrites out of our complacency. Whenever we tend to write off a person – be it a politician, bureaucrat, “outsider”, neighbor or the difficult family member who takes turns harassing and embarrassing us – this picture rears up and the words: “Do not judge. . . ‘ Lord help us see.
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