Daily Mass gospel Reflection - Critical Lens... or Mirror?

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 06.20.22 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

TWELFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

MATTHEW 7:1-5

Friends, Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel
is one of the most psychologically and spiritually insightful remarks in the New Testament.
Let’s face it: a favorite pastime of most human beings is criticism of others.

We delight in pointing out the shortcomings, moral failings, and annoying tendencies of our neighbors.
This is, of course, a function of pride and egotism:
the more I put someone else down, the more elevated I feel.

But it is also, oddly, a magnificent means of turning a mirror on ourselves,
to see what usually remains unseen. Why, we ought to ask, do we find precisely this sin of others particularly annoying?
Why does that trait or sin of a confrere especially gall us?

Undoubtedly, Jesus implies, because it reminds us of a similar failing in ourselves.
I remember a retreat director asking each of us to call to mind a person that we found hard to take
and then to recount in detail the characteristics that made the person so obnoxious to us.
Then he recommended that we go back to our room and ask God to forgive those same faults in ourselves.
His words were as unnerving and as illuminating as these words of Jesus.

[MurphsLaw]

+++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.”+++