Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“”Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first.” Lk 6:42
A week ago, an extraordinary meeting of Catholic bishops from throughout the world took place at the Vatican. The reason was highlighted by media everywhere:
The scandalous revelation of priests abusing children – and bishops covering it up … possibly the most heinous scandal in the entire history of the Church. And it includes every country where the Church has been present.
The reality of this horrific outrage can no longer be denied or hidden. At long last, this issue is openly recognized as a global problem of untold proportions. The consequence of this Vatican “abuse summit” is that Pope Francis has called for an “all-out battle” against “crimes that must be erased from the face of the earth.”
At the end of the “unprecedented Vatican summit,” the Pope stated that the Church needed to take “every necessary measure” to end this “scourge.” The Pope further wrote that abuse of this nature should never be “covered up” or tolerated at any level of church life. He concluded by saying that the Church “will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice” anyone who has committed these “crimes” of abuse.
Powerful, commanding, forceful words. But only words.
In reality we are no longer persuaded. Words alone are not enough. Now is the time to step forward on this treacherous journey of repentance and renewal. Now is the time to put words and promises into action – universally.
And what better way to begin correcting our past and assuring a new kind of future than to carefully, prayerfully meditate on the radical challenge presented to us in today’s Gospel from Luke:
“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first.”
What Jesus is saying to us in this passionate challenge can best be summed up in three words:
Change your hearts!
As one scripture scholar puts it: “A more humane world can never be born unless people’s hearts are changed from within …. Only men and women with new hearts can make a new world! …. Living before God means living differently from those who seek power and wealth and illicit sexual behavior.”
Today Luke reminds us in the most explicit terms that our behavior must reflect who our God is. We are to be like God – merciful, compassionate, generous … and fully respectful of another person’s dignity and decency.
The church that professes Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, as their Redeemer, as their Reflection of God in time – that church, which includes each of us – must lead the way in “removing the wooden beam from our eyes first.”
We must now become the champions of safeguarding the “least of these” – children. In other words, not only the pope and bishops and priests – the clerical dimension of the church – but all of us. All of us who profess faith in the God of unfathomable graciousness and infinite love.
The major distinguishing feature of Jesus’ call to follow him is that we are to be people set apart by the way we live our lives, by the way in which we imitate the God we claim we believe in.
Our ethics, our manner of living in this world, are not governed ultimately by reason alone or by laws alone. Instead, our sense of morality, and our ethical demands are based on the relationship we have been called to develop with the living, merciful, gracious God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
Change your hearts!
This is what must happen within our church and within each of us.
Change the way you see. Change the way you value people. Change the way you treat other human beings – especially children!
This is what we as a faith community must rededicate ourselves to in the light of these horrific abuses of the most defenseless.
And this is what Luke is referring to when he writes so passionately: “You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first.”
Change your hearts!
Then, and only then, can we put an end to the kind of savagery that has led to such a gigantic perversion. Or, as Luke concludes this Gospel passage:
“A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good … for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”
Change your hearts!
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194.1
2/28/19
