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.”
2). The second process mentioned in our First Reading was that faults revealed when one speaks-
There was a Trappist abbot who told a story about a monastery that was established in Brazil. After a while a peasant, traveling a great distance, made his way to the monastery and asked permission to join the community. In telling his story, the peasant said, “Where I come from I had always been told that there was one or two ways of following Christ. Then you came and there was another way.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote, “God does not have a fixed plan that he must carry out; on the contrary he has many ways of finding a person and even turning their wrong ways into right ways.”
There is saying “live and let live” regarding not bothering or criticizing people who are sincerely seeking God in accordance with their conscience.
Their personality or type of spirituality or even lay ministry might not be your cup of tea, but, in time, like pottery coming out of the furnace, the fruits of holiness will be either known to all or remain half-baked.
Time will tell.
3). The last process mentioned in our First Reading is about how the quality of a tree determines how good its fruit.
There is a saying “check the fruits, fix the roots.” The tree makes the fruit, the fruit doesn’t make the tree.
The term "discernment of spirits" is found once explicitly in the Bible, at 1 Corinthians 12:10. Paul is writing about "spiritual gifts." He lists nine examples of these and makes three points concerning these variety of gifts: they have a single source ("the same Spirit," "the same Lord," "the same God who inspires them all in every one," and their end is "the common good."
A few other passages from the New Testament also refer indirectly to discernment of spirits. They are: "disputes over opinions" (Rom. 14:1)] "the word of God . . . discerning (kritikos) the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb 4:12); "to distinguish good from evil" (Heb 5:14); and to "test the spirits" (1 John 4:l).
Why discernment of spirits is so practical can be seen by St. Benedict, who makes discretio a typical Benedictine virtue. The word is found only three times in the Rule: once in a passing, about the abbot, in reference to moderation in punishment, but the other two are about always being discreet and moderate, bearing in mind the discretion ["discretio"] of holy Jacob, who said: "If I cause my flocks to be overdriven, they will all perish in one day" [Gen 33:13]. So, imitating these and other examples of discretion, the mother of the virtues ["discretio mater virtutum"], St. Benedict says, temper all things that the strong may still have something to long after, and the weak may not draw back
A related topic is "communal discernment," defined by Jules Toner as "a process undertaken by a community as a community for the purpose of judging what God is calling that community to do.” The practice is generally traced by Jesuit authors to the "Deliberatio primorum patrum," a short account of deliberations conducted by Ignatius Loyola and others at Rome in 1539 which led to the formation of the Society of Jesus.
An example of “Check the fruits, fix the roots” is to confess and change the things in our life that if are not producing these kinds of fruit in our lives mentioned in Galatians 5:22: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Amen.
