Gospel Reflection- Monday, June 20, 2022

Today's Gospel comes to us from the seventh chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel and contains within it one of the most difficult admonitions contained in the Lord’s teaching: “Stop judging, that you may not be judged." (Mt. 7:1). What we find in this teaching is a pointed statement denouncing the attitude of the pharisees, who the Lord frequently opposes. However, the Gospel is not contained to individual people, and the pharisees are not simply a long-past group of hypocritical people who garnered a stern ‘talking-to” from Jesus. Rather, the pharisees stand for the pharisaical archetype, those who throughout history, right down to this very moment, take the power of judgement and criticism into their own hands. 

Why, we might ask, do we time and time again usurp the power of judgement and wield it against our neighbors? Jacques Philippe, in his book Interior Freedom, offers these sentiments on the topic: “Often, we fail to accept others because deep down, we do not accept ourselves…if we close our hearts against other people, make no effort to love them as they are, never learn to be reconciled with them, we will never have the grace to practice the deep reconciliation with ourselves that we all need.”.

Billy Graham, the great evangelist, once summed up the point of this gospel passage in his now famous message: “It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love”. That’s Christianity; That’s evangelization;  That’s defending the faith. If correcting our brother, if constructive criticism, if defense of the faith from perceived attacks bears bitter fruit in our hearts, and we find ourselves angry and hopeless, we can be sure that we are not heeding the Lord’s exhortation. To carry out these works under the pretense of love, with less-than-virtuous motives, only serves to divide, to injure, and to further the damage that we attempt to heal. Indeed, fraternal correction can be love, constructive criticism can be love, and defending the faith can be a great act of love, but let us always be sure that whenever we offer these acts of charity to our neighbor we do not judge, “For as you judge, so will you be judged.”. (Mt 7:2).

So then, let us love one another as He has loved us. Count on my prayers. God bless.