Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you.
A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to Luke Jesus told his disciples a parable, Can a blind person guide? A blind person will not both fall into a pit.
No disciple is superior to the teacher, but when one fully trained when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
How can you say to your brother, brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?
You hypocrite, Remove the wooden beam from your eye first.
Then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother's eye.
A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its fruit. For people do not pick figs from thorn bushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles.
A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good.
But the evil person out of the store of evil produces evil.
For from the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks the Gospel of the Lord.
I promise you, what I am about to share with you is not the violation of any confidence, but it's regarding someone who came to me for some counsel. Unless, of course, I'm talking about you, but don't worry about it.
But I was approached by a person at another parish, wondering if I could talk to her because she's having some real struggles with her husband. And I said, sure. So we made an appointment and she came in and for the first about 15 minutes, she rattled off every annoying habit that her husband had, to the point of saying, I can't even listen to him breathe, his nose whistles.
At which point in time my first reply was, okay, well, do you have any annoying habits now? I already had five. I recognized in the time we were together, but all she did was stare at me for what seemed like a couple of minutes and then said, well, I can't think of any off the top of my head.
And I said, well, think harder.
At which point in time she started to chuckle because she did realize she had some things that could be perceived as annoying.
But what I was getting at was exactly what Jesus is getting at here.
We got to take care of ourselves before we worry about pointing out the fault in others.
Fast forward to Roughly this time in the year 2020, I was in line at Kroger.
And it was one of those days where it seemed like everybody decided to get their groceries at that time.
And the lines were moving kind of slow.
And I got up to be the next person and the lady in front of me after all of her groceries were rang up, oh, wait, I think I have a coupon for that.
And then she opened up the steamer trunk that she pretended was a purse and began to search.
And after what seemed like two to three months, she pulled out a piece of paper, which was a coupon that expired in the 80s.
Okay, fair enough.
Well, then she was given the total, and she said, wait, I think I have the 21 cents.
Back into the steamer trunk.
Pulling out packs of Tums, the occasional mint, a flosser, all these other things, till she came up with the change to pay the bill.
Now, by this time, the blood vessels in my head were sticking out to about here.
My level of frustration and anger were taking me to the point of cardiac arrest.
Then I got up in line, and after all my groceries were rang up. I'm reaching.
I didn't have a wallet, so tucking my tail between my legs, I left later that day, went to Meijer instead of Kroger.
I didn't listen to this gospel.
Well, Jesus wants us always to make sure that the only person we really worry about in behaviors and attitudes, decisions, it's ourselves.
And that he wants us to understand that anytime criticism happens, it ought to happen looking into a mirror.
Because it's only when we reach perfection that we can really sit and criticize the lives of others, the decisions of others.
And that mirror that we look into in reality is Christ's presence and his counsel.
And it's through our prayer and our openness of heart that he allows us to see ourselves as we really are and gives us the opportunity to change those things about us that need to be changed and to recognize the good that only comes from his love. Let's get the planks out of our own eye before we ever pull the specks out of others.
