10 September 2021
Friday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
The words from today’s gospel “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?” can often be misinterpreted to mean “mind your own business,” or “don’t correct your brother because you’re not perfect either.”
This may seem to be the way to go given the examples of correction we see in today’s culture. On television and social media, it seems that the one who is the loudest, the wittiest, the one who has the last word is the winner in the game of “right versus wrong.”
But the Christian life, a life necessarily lived in community is not a game or a competition, nor is it a life lived in isolation, keeping to our very selves. What, then, is the proper way to understand the gospel message today?
I think we all may have had experiences in life in which we were completely blind to something and the shift that allows us to see ourselves, our lives, reality for what it is can be a painful process—as painful as removing a wooden beam we didn’t know was stuck in our eye.
But that pain can also be purifying and humbling.
When we see in others a similar blindness to our own, we will not respond with anger and arrogance, but remembering our own blindness and our own pain, we will be invited to respond with compassion, understanding and a gentle truth born of our own experience.