2ND WEEK OF LENT – Judgement; Measure for Measure

Jesus said, “Don’t judge and you will not be judged: do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” – Luke 6:37-38

“JUDGING OTHERS”

Judging our fellow human beings is as perplexing as the perceiving of colors on a spinning top. When it is at rest, or on a fixed state,…we think we can well judge his character.  But when we see him in the whirl of motion of everyday life…all his goodness and badness blur into indistinctiveness. There is so much goodness at one moment, badness at another, sin in one instance, virtue in another, sobriety at one point, excess in another, that it is well to leave the judgment to God…. 

The way we judge others is very often the judgment which we  pronounce upon ourselves…Every dramatist, scriptwriter, novelist, and essayist who attacks the moral law has lived against it in his own life. These men may not know it, but in their writings they are penning their own autobiography…. – Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, GUIDE TO CONTENTMENT

At times the good that we do is to offset some bad that we have done. We may give our attention to amend our inattentiveness elsewhere. We offer charity in recompense for being uncharitable. We express contempt toward atrocities when in our hearts we know that our own thoughts and behavior have been other than honorable; all in an attempt to balance the scales of justice. In and of themselves, these good works are commendable; yet would be of more value if their provider did so not to ease a guilty conscience, but rather to fulfill a merciful heart. 

And if we are true to ourselves we come to realize, because of our own weaknesses and failures, that we are in no position to judge others. Our efforts would best be spent in straightening our ways and living right in the movement  toward spiritual perfection. And, in so doing, we discover that we no longer have the desire to measure others; because we now understand that the concerns of judgment belong only to He who is flawless, and bears neither speck nor beam in eye as we.