Daily Reflection Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks to us about judging. It is certainly a very well known passage. Jesus even includes a bit of what the East would call karma, “The measure with which you measure will be the measure with which you are measured.” This has been stated elsewhere as, what goes around, comes around.

This idea of judging that Jesus speaks of here is usually associated with our judgements of others. And there are innumerable ways in which we do that. We judge people’s behavior, their character and characteristics, their motives, their tendencies, their attractiveness or lack of it and the innumerable ways why and on and on. We very often size people up on our first meeting, comparing them to others and to our ideas of what we want or don’t want, what we like and don’t like. It must be admitted that we often make these judgements immediately and without thinking. We can’t really help it. What Jesus is asking us is do we follow through on these judgements? Do they define our attitudes toward others or do we see them, rather, as a way to humbly admit our legion of prejudices and ask God to help us act against them?

We all know that we as Christians ought seek to deny our innate judgements of others by embracing the power of God’s love. It’s impossible to really judge someone when we truly love them. The more insidious judgements we make, however, lie in two areas. The first is when we take offense and the second is when we judge things that happen as either good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, desirable or undesirable. The first, taking offense at people for any reason, is always our choice. People do not offend us, we choose to be offended by them. Our taking offense really has nothing to do with their behavior but everything to do with our judging it as unacceptable. Whenever we are offended or bothered by anyone for any reason whatsoever, we have passed judgement on them. It’s that simple. Why should someone else’s behavior cause us to be offended? It has nothing to do with us. We only make it to do with us by our judging and condemning that behavior because we just don’t like it.

The second insidious judgements we make all the time concern things that happen to us. Why do we judge healthy as good and sickness as bad? Or success verses failure? Strength verses weakness? Happiness verses sorrow or pain verses freedom from pain? There are so many things we want as opposed to so many others we definitely don’t want. So many things we deem desirable and worth seeking and so many other things we dread and fear. When Jesus speaks about judgement, he is referring to these things also.

If we would learn to simply accept everything that happens to us, resisting even labeling it in any way as good or bad, desirable or undesirable, and merely allow it to happen telling ourselves that we have no idea why this is happening or how it happened but we simply accept it believing that we can somehow find God’s presence and love for us within it no matter what it is, then our many fears would begin to subside. We would begin to start to rely only on God’s grace and not on what we think is good or what we want. We would find freedom. And if we could carry that simple acceptance into our relationships with other people, we would discover what it means to love the other no matter what rather than love what we think others can give us. One leads to the fulness of life while the other leads to anger, fear, pride and resentment, not to mention greed, selfishness and envy.

It all boils down to judging. “Judge not lest you be judged,” does not mean that we will be judged by God but that our own judgements will simply judge us, imprisoning our hearts within that very judgement. Jesus came to free us from that prison, a prison of the self and of fear, by showing us how to love everyone and everything by surrendering all judgement. If the measure with which we measure is love rather than judgement, then no power in heaven or earth can ever judge or condemn us.