Deacon Bob's Homily - 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time (2-27-2022) at St. Mary's

today's gospel verses start a few lines after the heading each section of a verse has a heading the heading for this one is judging others those first couple of verses were the completion of last week's gospel and i think it's worth reading them again today to understand what is going on this week so the last two lines last week where jesus said stop judging you will not be judged stop condemning and you will not be condemned forgive and you will be forgiven give and gifts will be given to you a good measure packed together shaken down and overflowing will be poured into your lap for the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you we have asked for this every day we pray forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us god is telling us not to judge and that is a good thing for two reasons the first reason that is that we are all terrible judges the second reason is that god will be the judge he will judge all of us and this is good because god knows our hearts god knows us better than we know ourselves we should all believe that god is merciful if not who among us is worthy of eternal salvation god is merciful and he will shower us with mercy but maybe in a sense of fairness he is going to shade his judgment based on how we have judged others how we have measured others how we have shown mercy the implication the implication implication is that if what we have done is fair in our minds then we would mind it if that is how we are judged hopefully you are all thinking what i am thinking i do not want to be judged the way i have judged others jesus tells us two parables today both are very comical we see jesus's sense of humor the first one is about the blind leading the blind have you ever seen a blind man leading another blind man of course not the idea is comical imagine where they would go imagine what trouble they would get into and how much imagine how much they would get hurt i think of mr magoo if you remember mr magoo each one is blindly trusting the other one to lead him around they think they are safe they think they are being led in the right direction but it's just a matter of time before they fall into a ditch i guess this could happen a blind man could be standing at the crosswalk of a busy intersection another blind man walks up beside the person says help across the street the first blind man thinking that the second man was offering help not asking for it for sure and together arm in arm they step off the curb and into traffic you know what will happen cars screeching to a stop onlookers screaming warnings let's pretend that they make it safely across they both say at the same time thanks each wondering why the other was thanking him this is the way it is when you are spiritually blind and trying to lead someone else you might think that this verse means we should make sure we are not following blind guides and it is but it is also telling us that we should make sure that we are not blind guides let's ask ourselves are we spiritually blind jesus is calling us to be leaders he's calling us to be disciples we should take this call with responsibility we must prepare ourselves for this task if we ourselves are blind we cannot lead others who are blind blindness is a symbol for those who are in darkness those who do not have faith disciples are able to share the light of faith by becoming better formed in their own faith disciples must become teachers of the faith jesus says that we must aspire to be like the teacher like jesus although we will never be greater than the teacher just like a blind person cannot lead another blind person a student cannot lead a teacher the second parable about the man with a wooden beam in the eye in his eye imagine it a beam not a sliver not a speck not a small stick but a big 20-foot beam i have seen pictorial views of this a man with a large beam sticking out of his eye socket he could probably only see splinters out of this eye he does not manage to think that he sees it he does manage to think that he sees a splinter in his brother's eye jesus asked how can you say to your brother brother let me remove that splinter in your eye jesus calls this man a hypocrite isn't that what would we what we would be hypocrites noticing the weaknesses or problems in others but not noticing the weakness in our own lives jesus says to remove the being first from your own eye then you will be able to remove the splinter from your brother's eye let me give you an example i was driving down cooper road when i saw a person on a small scooter you know little tiny scooters in the side street and realized that he was going to make the turn and pull in front of me i started to say myself say to myself look at this idiot he doesn't know how to drive but then i noticed it was a friend of mine i slowed up to give him plenty of room he never noticed that it was me but if it wasn't my friend i probably would still be talking about how crazy this driver was and imagine if i was on the scooter i would expect everybody to stop and let me go here comes bob i started judging then i changed my judgment then i changed my outlook we are all given to noting the defects of others more readily readily than our own we judge our neighbors while not recognizing our own faults one way to combat this is to pray for humility to pray for gentleness in dealing with others when jesus said let the one without sin cast the first stone what happened maybe we should remember this when we are ready to throw stones to throw judgments jesus cautions us to correct our own weaknesses and faults before we can effectively help someone else when i change the whole world changes we are terrible judges but even if who are not terrible judges would it make any difference would anything change though jesus spoke in terms of good tree bad tree good person evil person in reality every human person is a work in progress at any time a person is a mixture of good and evil a person is both redeemed and unredeemed jesus does not want disciples who do good things like the good tree jesus wants disciples who are good who have acknowledged their faults and have worked on them through time and effort and prayer to become truly holy people of faith the good tree always bears good fruit in the next section jesus says the gospel coming up why do you call me lord lord but do not do what i command because lord i am redeemed and i am unredeemed a good tree bears good fruit every tree is known by its own fruit a good person out of goodness in his heart produces good an evil person out of evil produces evil for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks

Channel: St. Mary Catholic Church Cherry Hill NJ

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Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 27 2022