Fr. Eric's Homily | February 27, 2022

dear friends in christ every human being has some amazing gifts and this may sound funny when i say it but one gift that every human being has is the amazing ability to see the faults in other people it's a gift it's an act and we're good at it aren't we now satan wants to use that gift for his purpose but god wants us to use that gift for his purpose and every person has the amazing ability to see the faults in others we don't see faults too well in ourselves but we see them very well in others and this is what jesus means in our gospel today when he says take the plank out of your own eye before you try to take the speck out of your brother's eye so we may not see our own faults very well but we're very good at seeing faults in others even if it's a tiny speck and the reason we're so good at this is because of a thing in psychology called projection and projection means that i will always notice in you the fault that is most present in me and that's what will bother me the most about any person are the faults in them that are most present in me so if let's say the faults most present in me are impatience and anger then those are the faults that will most bother me if i see them in you or in someone else so the faults that will most bother me and a person are the faults that are in me by which i cause myself the most pain in my life because of that when you look at another person and see their faults do you realize that there are two paths that open up in front of you one path is the path that leads to personal perfection and holiness and in heaven because you will recognize your own faults in the other person's faults so you'll know what you need to do and what to change to improve your own life and that's the path that god wants us to take that will lead us to heaven but the other path is the path that leads to gossip slander detraction and so on where we talk about the other person's faults to other people and that's the path that satan wants us to take that could lead us to hell but notice that both paths are born out of the same human quality and that human quality is the ability to notice the faults in others but one path uses that ability to do good the only path uses it to sin but those are the two paths set before us and those are our two choices so for example if i see some fault in you i can do one of two things i can turn to someone and tell them everything that's wrong with you or i can take some time in prayer and try to figure out why your fault is so bothersome to me and then i can discover that maybe it's because that same fault is in me and then i can do something about me but it's very interesting that every gift can be used for satan's purpose or for god's purpose and the gift to be able to see the faults of others can either be used for good for self-improvement and self perfection or we can use it for sin and to just talk about the faults of others but the problem of noticing and just talking about the faults in others that are also false in me is that if i judge you then i've also judged me because what i judge in you is the very same fault that's present in me there's no way i can escape it and all this goes back to projection and projecting our faults onto others and because of projection people often misjudge innocent people and that happened a lot to our lord jesus for example do you remember what the pharisees constantly accused jesus of being a hypocrite they constantly thought he was a hypocrite and they would say oh he wants to appear to be so holy yet he's wandering around with these sinners but was jesus a hypocrite uh-uh who was the hypocrite the pharisees because they projected this evil onto jesus from within themselves from out of themselves now i wonder if any pharisee ever went home at night and thought i wonder why i think jesus is a hypocrite i think maybe nicodemus did and maybe others did but any time you notice a fault in another person those two paths open before you and make no mistake about it one path will lead as surely to heaven as the other path will lead as surely to hell but those two paths open up to us because of the very same gifts that we all have namely the ability to see faults in others and it's just something to be very aware of so if someone comes up to you and starts to really lambast a person understand that they have possibly revealed a lot about themselves oh yeah they're revealing a lot that's going on within them and it's very interesting that in speaking about the faults of others very often we reveal our own faults and this is what sirach says in our first reading he says as when a sieve is shaken the husks appear so do a man's faults appear when he speaks and sirach is telling us that our speech will reveal our faults and to give you some examples if you've ever been in a group of people bible study or any group of people that's discussing what faults saint paul refers to by his thorn in the flesh be very careful what you suggest that fault is because whatever you suggest it may reveal to the group a lot more about your fault than you intend okay or to give another example of how our speech can reveal our faults when i was in the seminary a guy named tony always said the same prayer at mass every day in the prayers of the faithful and he always prayed for peace and the house meaning for peace in the seminary and then one day tony left the seminary and about a month later a classmate of ours said to us isn't it interesting since tony left that his prayer for peace in the house has finally been answered and it's the idea that tony's prayer revealed that he wasn't at bees and yet one more example of this is the person who commits a crime then tries to pin it on someone else and again look at the pharisees is a good example because that's what they did to jesus in order to exonerate themselves they had to frame jesus and everything they accused him of they did so for example when jesus worked a miracle they said it was a trick where's the trick why why did they do that because they were tricksters oh yeah and their their cures were done with tricks when jesus went to the synagogue or to the temple they said he did it to be seen as holy why because they performed their religious duties to be seen as holy and the reason why the pharisees could accuse jesus so forcefully is because they didn't have to make up bad things to say about him all they had to do was take what they were doing and pin it on him and they accused him so easily because they were just talking about themselves they revealed their hearts and in our own lives our speech will often reveal our own faults and as you and i see the faults of others may that gift revealed to us our own faults so that we might work to overcome those faults on the path that leads to personal perfection holiness and heaven

Channel: St. Thomas Aquinas Church

Views: 26

Keywords: Religious, Catholic, St. Thomas Aquinas, Church, Mass, Homily, Eucharist

Id: MBGkG5LYEa4

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 27 2022