Peace be with you. Friends, our Gospel
for today is taken from the very end of Luke's
Sermon on the Plain. So in Matthew,
Jesus gives his definitive teaching on a mountain,
the Sermon on the Mount. In Luke's Gospel,
his version has Jesus speaking on a plain. So we've been following
his great teaching and we come now to the end of it,
where he has a lot of strong things to say
about spiritual teachers and spiritual guides. Mind you,
he's been operating here as the definitive
spiritual teacher. If you're looking for
the criterion, here it is. It's Jesus himself teaching. But now he's commenting
on spiritual teachers we might choose after him, after he's been raised
from the dead, and who are they? What are they like? Which ones are trustworthy? Which ones aren't? We get some, I think,
really good lessons from this little section. I'd say this. Anyone that is acquainted
with TV and especially social media today, there are a lot of people
claiming to be gurus and teachers
and spiritual guides. I mean, they're
a dime a dozen, they're thick on the ground. So we got to be careful. Paul talks about
discerning the spirits. Well, we have to also
discern spiritual teachers. Whom are we going
to follow and why? Well, listen now to the Lord. “Can a blind person
guide a blind person? Will not both
fall into a pit?” Well, that's a pretty
good image, isn't it? If you're spiritually blind, you don’t know
where you're going. The last person to choose
is someone as blind as you are because he's going
to lead you nowhere good. In fact, the scholars say
the pit that Jesus refers to here would be a deep well. So it's not just a little
inconvenience but someone leading you into
a deadly place. You fall down a well,
you're a blind person, I mean you could
kill yourself. Well, it's true,
if I can be blunt. You put your hands
in the wrong kind of spiritual teacher, they can lead to
a spiritual death, the blind leading the blind. So the question is,
is the person to whom you've entrusted
your life and your heart and your mind, soul blind? Or is that person
a visionary? Do they know where
to take you or not? Are they as lost as you are? Jesus says, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me
will not walk in darkness but will have
the light of life." So again, Jesus is the spiritual
teacher par excellence. So in a way, this question's
rather simple to answer. Is your spiritual guide someone
who is surrendered to Christ? Is your spiritual guide a
disciple of the Lord Jesus? Has he or she surrendered
his or her life to Christ? That's the criterion. Now, I'm not implying for a
moment that there aren't truths, even profound truths,
in other religions and spiritual traditions. There are,
Vatican II teaches that. But you're looking
for the full truth. You're looking for
the bright light. Christ is the
light of the world. And those who teach in his
name and follow his path, they're the ones
you want to follow. How about this? “No disciple is
superior to his teacher, but when fully trained,
every disciple will be like his teacher.” Good, good. Whom do you want to be like? We want to be like Christ. Therefore, find a teacher
who's conformed to Christ. Someone at odds
with Christ, that's not the person
to entrust your life to, because if you follow that person faithfully
you'll become like him. Find someone who's a clear
disciple of the Lord. He's the one to follow,
or she's the one to follow. I like this next quality. A good spiritual teacher is someone who acknowledges
his own need for a Savior. Let me say that again. A good spiritual guide is
someone who acknowledges his own need for a Savior. The one who will best lead
you to Christ is someone whom
Christ has saved. And that person knows it. Very important, isn't it? Hey, I'm looking
for salvation. I'm looking to
follow the Lord. I'm looking for the
path of discipleship. Well, follow someone who's
been saved and who knows it. I've shared before that definition
I love of evangelization is one starving person telling another starving person
where to find bread. In other words, the best
evangelist is someone who's been evangelized, who was lost and
then was found, who was starving
and then found food. That's the person
you want to follow, the one who's been saved. And Jesus uses this memorable
and actually pretty funny image to express this. Listen. “Why do you notice the
splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the
wooden beam in your own? How can you say
to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove
that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice
the wooden beam in your own eye?” Funny, as I say, because
you're talking about a spiritual teacher that wants
to perform the delicate operation of removing a splinter
from your eye. That means their vision's got
to be super clear, unobstructed. They've got to be able to
see these little fine details to remove that splinter. But the images,
think about a beam of wood coming out of someone's eye. It's not a splinter
or a sliver, it's a beam of wood. They're so blind to
their own problem, their own need for salvation. But yet they're presuming
to tell you how to be saved. That is ipso facto a
bad spiritual guide. And I think it's actually
fairly easy to see. It manifests itself as
a spiritual arrogance. Think of all the people —again, go online,
you'll find an army of them— who are very eager to
tell you what's wrong with your spiritual life,
very eager to tell you, “here's the problem.” They’re great diagnosticians
in the spiritual order. But have they been healed? Do they acknowledge that
they were and are sinners who stood and stand
in need of a Savior? Those whom the Lord
has healed who then become
themselves healers. If you're dealing with
a healer who's not been healed, watch out. That's dangerous
territory to be entering. You give someone who's got a wooden beam
coming out of his eye the privilege of operating on
the little splinter in your eye? Well, you deserve
that person, I suppose. So be sensitive,
be sensitive to this fact. Is the person I've entrusted
my life to someone who's been saved and knows it? Otherwise, trouble. Here's another image I love, now from this closing section
of the Sermon on the Plain. “A good tree does not
bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten
tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known
by its own fruit.” That's a simple but really good
and important spiritual principle. Long ago, the great Greek
philosopher Aristotle taught, “Don't listen to
what people say. Watch what people do.” In other words,
you're trying to figure out
someone's character. What kind of person is that? Well, they can say
a lot of things. They'll tell you all kinds
of things about themselves; all right, maybe that's right,
maybe it's wrong. But you know
what doesn't lie? Their behavior. Watch what they do.
See them in action. That will tell you the kind of person
you're dealing with. In my many years of
working in the seminary, doing vocation work,
helping these young guys discern their vocation,
especially when I was rector, so when
I was in charge of the seminary, students would come
to me and they'd say, "Father, I love the liturgy, and the Mass means
everything to me,” or, “The Liturgy
of the Hours, I have no trouble with that.
I love praying the Office,” or, “Father, I'm really dedicated
to the poor, working with the poor.
That means the world to me." Okay. Yeah, I'll take you at your
word and I'll believe you, but see, I wasn't so much
focused on their words because people say
a lot of things. I would then watch them. So over the course of
the year or couple years, several years, that guy
told me he loves the liturgy and yet he misses Mass three
or four times a week. Yeah, I know that
guy told me he's —boy, the Liturgy of the Hours,
it means the world to him— but yet he's not at our
common prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. Yeah, he told me
he loves the poor, but yet we've had all
kinds of pastoral opportunities to go down
to the city of Chicago and to serve
the poor directly. And he's only once
in a while done that. What do I believe? What he said or
what he did? Oh, Aristotle had it right,
didn't he? So, you're looking for someone
who'll be a spiritual guide. They might say a lot of things,
even good things. Take that with
a grain of salt. Watch him,
watch her in action. Does he demonstrate in his life
the fruits of the Holy Spirit? See, what everyone is looking
for in spiritual guidance is finally the Holy Spirit. That's what you want
for spiritual direction. You want the Spirit in you. Well, you don't want the
blind leading the blind. You want someone
who's got the Spirit. You want someone that knows
that he needed a Savior. You want someone who's aligned
to the light of Christ, and therefore somebody
who is exhibiting clearly in his or her life
these fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace. What are they like
as you watch them? Maybe they've even told you
a lot of good and wise things, but as you watch them,
what's it like? Don't listen to what they say,
watch what they do. And you'll know if someone
has the Holy Spirit. So as we come to
the end of this section of Luke,
the Sermon on the Plain, and we've heard the
teaching of Jesus, and now if we're
serious spiritually, we're endeavoring to
take this into our lives. And so we need
spiritual guides, whether it's preachers,
spiritual directors, the priests. How do you do it? Attend to this last section,
and I might put special stress finally on the splinter
and the beam principle. If you want to entrust
to someone this delicate responsibility of trying to remove
the splinter from your eye, make sure it's not someone with a
beam coming out of his own eye. Make sure it's somebody who's
been saved and who knows it. Make sure it's a sinner who stood in need
of salvation and found it. Make sure it's a starving
person like you who found bread. That's the one
you should trust. And God bless you. Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video,
I invite you to share it and to subscribe
to my YouTube channel.
