"Check The Fruits, Fix The Roots” --8th Sunday In Ordinary Time

Sirach, chapter 27, from our First Reading, relates the steady application of three processes over time to create a separation or distinction based on intrinsic properties of quality:

1). The first is the image of shaking a mesh strainer to reveal the husks from the kernel which is similar to faults revealed when one speaks.

The Bible and all of the ancient world viewed the mouth as the collector of words, articulator of speech, and the doorway to the soul. e.g. from our Gospel, the splinter represents a slight sin or fault, while the 'beam' stands for a serious sin or a great fault.

Situation: Your kid says, “I got a bad report card.” The splinter: The teacher is weird. The wooden beam: What were my study habits like?”

Situation: Your kid says, “I didn’t get my full allowance.” The splinter: My parents are unfair. The wooden beam: Which tasks did I not do?”

Sometimes a person has both a splinter and a wooden beam in both eyes.

Situation: Fornication is normally defined as sex between an unmarried man and woman. It is widely considered normal and acceptable in popular music, movies and television programs. The splinter and wooden beam are: We love each other so there is nothing wrong with it. What a practicing Catholic Christian actually hears the person saying: “I am so mixed up about God’s laws and the theology of the body that I don’t even grasp that fornication is a mortal sin.”

The question underlying the saying the splinter and the beam is that of reproof or correcting others. The rabbis recognized that if one saw his fellow commit a sin, he must reprove him, and thus endeavor to bring him back to the better way of life. For this task of reproving they had the warrant of Leviticus 19:17, “Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt.” However, as Jesus tells us, one who takes upon himself to reprove another should first look to it that he is not guilty of a greater fault than that of the one he would correct. Jesus famously upbraided the religious leaders of his day for their hypocrisy, as those who would look to the splinter in their brother’s eye while failing to observe the plank in their own would be a hypocrite.

The early rabbis were very familiar with the well-known teaching about the splinter and beam, e.g. Rabbi Johanan said, in speaking about the first verse of the Book of Ruth: It was a generation which judged its judges. If the judge said to a man, 'Take out the splinter from between your teeth,' he would retort, 'Take the beam from between your eyes.' If the judge said, 'Your silver is dross,' he would retort, 'Your liquor is mixed with water.'

In other words, the rabbi’s complained that no one would even accept a correction because of pride. Many of the ancient rabbi’s complained, “There is not one in this generation who is able to receive reproof”(Rabbi Eleazar Azariah, Rabbi Tarphon, and Rabbi Akiba).

Yet, as Thomas Merton said in his book, Seeds of Contemplation, “Nothing is more suspicious in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.”

We have to have a solid track record of overcoming the fault we are trying to correct in others. One’s predominate fault will never go away but it should lessen by degrees over time, to the point where it’s not even a venial sin, just a temptation.

As Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said, “It is a law of nature that no one ever gets his second wind until he has used up his first wind. So, it is with knowledge. Only when we practice the moral truths which we already know will a deeper understanding of those truths and a fuller revelation come to us. Each new height the mind reveals must be captured by the will before greater heights come into view.”

Correcting others with care that is only borne of knowledge and experience from past struggles and failures is the message. Only after that, Jesus encourages us to use our clearer sight to correct and evangelize others.

To illustrate:

A wise man was once threatened with death by a bandit called Angulimal.

“Then be good enough to fulfill my dying wish,” said the wise man. “Cut off the branch of that tree.”

One slash of the sword, and it was done! “What now?” asked the bandit.

Put it back again,” said the wise man.

The bandit laughed. “You must be crazy to think anyone can do that.”

“On the contrary, it is you who are crazy to think that you are mighty because you can wound and destroy. That is the task of children. The mighty know how to create and heal.”