Let me fix that for you.

The Readings for the 12th Monday, Tempus per Annum

• 2 Kings 17:5-8, 13-15a, 18
• Matthew 7:1-5

Let me remove that splinter from your eye.

Matthew 7:4 (NABRE)

THIS BIT ABOUT NOT JUDGING is quite familiar to us. We’re often told (as Catholics) that we’re being “too judgey” when it comes to sex or some “inclusion” issue in secular society. People who don’t listen to a thing the Holy Father has said about abortion will yell “Don’t Judge” and “Who am I to judge?” without even realizing it’s a line from the Bible. (That’s a hateful book that should be in public libraries, they say.)

What struck me in this reading today was the very passive-aggressive line, “Let me remove that splinter from your eye.” The implied context is the other party didn’t ask for help first. I’ve someone asked me for help, it’s ok. But jumping into “mansplain” without being asked to do so is very tiresome, indeed! That’s sort of “Hey, let me show you where you’re wrong, even though you didn’t ask.”

In this passage, Jesus is telling us to hush and just sit there for a while. Pray even.

How often is it possible to do that? Depending on one’s job and general personality that can almost be a moment-by-moment temptation!

I think it might be useful to focus on the area of faith in this meditation. How often do we reach him and say, let me fix that for you when nothing is broken?

Recently on Twitter, someone noted that they did not find the rosary to be of any use. Instantly there were jumped upon by a whole bunch of people, sadly including the present writer, all of whom insisted you needed the rosary to be Catholic. This of course is not true.

There are those who judge others for their piety, insisting that one or another item will break things. My own struggle with this is in the area of the Daily Office: having hit a liturgical high point with the traditional Benedictine Office in English in my former monastery, it drives me bonkers when people can’t understand how to put the office together, when the Church says certain Psalms make people “uncomfortable” and shouldn’t be said, or when Church leaders publish books on the office with mistakes. I mean it’s so simple! Let me show you how it’s done. Did you know the Dominicans only do the antiphons once?

Jesus whispers, hush. And tells I need to sit down.

You have no idea how important that is: inside my brain, I was practically screaming as I typed the above “problems”.

One of the things Jesus is pointing to here seems to be cutting people off unnecessarily. The greek word for “judge” means to “cut”. In my liturgical examples, we are dividing the Church, cutting people off into right and wrong groups based on the assumption that I am right and you need to learn a few things.

For actual sins, Jesus tells us how to do things (see: Matthew 18:15-17) working with the whole Church. This is why Bishops are empowered to do certain things that random laity are not. And, when the Bishops work together with the Pope, they can decide whole teachings are heretical and outside the bounds of Christianity entirely. But that’s not my job. Nor yours, really. When Jesus describes the right way to work with a brother who is sinning, the point is to win the brother back to the Church (Matthew 18:15b). When we act like that even when the Brother is not out of bounds, we risk kicking him out by our own actions instead of by his sins. In other words, we risk offending him and sinning ourselves.

Jesus whispers hush.