In today’s Gospel reading (St. Luke 6), Our Lord says:
“Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.”
Everyone loves to blame others for being hypocrites, but Jesus isn’t teaching us to identify hypocrisy in others. He’s teaching His disciples that they are hypocrites. It’s hypocrites who spend their time talking about others being hypocrites and Jesus is teaching us what true devotion consists of.
There is no passage of Scripture that doesn’t simply expand on other passages of Scripture. The meanings are not mysterious and the same message is repeated again and again.
When Jesus tells us to “remove the wooden beam from your eye”, He can only be speaking about one thing and that is the love of God. The Christian life does not begin with the correction of others. It begins with contemplation. A true Christian loves God and seeks Him through prayer, study and the sacraments He’s given us. The true believer gives his attention to these activities. In God, he has an inexhaustible treasure of wisdom which will satisfy him forever. Contemplation will make all other interests empty and boring. The contemplative man, focused on God, will have interest in nothing else. It is said, for example, of St. Dominic that he spoke either “to God or about God”. Nothing else is interesting in itself.
The mind and heart of such a man is one from which the wooden beam that blinds us has been removed. In God’s light, he sees all things as they truly are, and esteems all things in relation to God. This is true Wisdom, and what it means to see clearly.
Such a man, in such a state, is able to help his neighbor.
Now, the reason why our neighbor is said to have a splinter in his eye rather than a wooden beam is because, relative to us, our neighbor’s problem is smaller than our own. We, after all, are responsible for our own soul and not that of our neighbor. Shakespeare wrote, “Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.”((Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene 1.)) Not being our responsibility, our neighbor’s trouble is a splinter to us.
Nevertheless, we have a duty to help–not for our neighbor’s sake, but for the love of God. This work, then, of correction is a secondary and less important work that a man is only capable of when his primary work is done. That is, only a man who obeys the first and greatest commandment can serve the second, which is like to it.
We are not called, as Christans, to devote our time and attention to the discovery and correction of other men’s faults. We are called to know, love and serve God. If we do this, the rest is easy.
So, rather than asking about our neighbor’s behavior, we should be asking:
- Have I attended Mass today?
- Have I made confession recently?
- Have I recited the divine office today?
- Have I stidued the Scriptures today?
- Have I prayed the Rosary today?
- Have I performed the works of mercy today?
When we consider the duties that come under the first commandment, it’s clear we don’t have much time for the second. And, when we do attend to the second commandment, we will only have something valuable to offer when we’re fulfilling the first.
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Headmaster
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
