OUR WRONG JUDGMENTS

MONDAY, TWELVETH WEEK IN ORDERINARY TIME

2 Kings 17:5-8,13-15; Ps 60:3-5,12-13; Mt 7:1-5

Our Judgement of Others

We continue on the Sermon on the Mount of our Lord Jesus, which we have considered the foundation of Christian spirituality. A foundation that is evidently more solid and deeper than that of the Old Testament and any other spirituality or religion. The foundation of Christian spirituality is laid deep within each person's interior. Such depth within each of us can only be accessed by the Son of Man through the Holy Spirit, for it is located in the centre of the individual person as the place of God within each of us. Thus, the spirituality arising from the Sermon on the Mount is unique to a Christian and cannot be imitated by any other religion or founded on any other name. Jesus Christ has the authority to lay this foundation as the Son of Man and the Son of God. As he affirmed himself in Jn 8:34-35, that the Son has freedom and authority in the House which no slave or steward has. “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever. So if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” It is with this authority that he re-establishes his Father’s house within us.

In the same light, judgment does not belong to a slave or steward, but to the son. Hence, we cannot judge others when we are still slaves of sin. Such judgment would be rash and ignorant. The first thing we ought to do is to seek to change our status in the house of God, from slaves to adopted sons in Jesus Christ. The path leading to this change of status is the path of obedience and faithfulness in fulfilling the Father's will. We are to judge ourselves in the light of the Gospel. The sacred will of the Father is revealed by the Son of God, who became man for our salvation. So, the Father wills to change our status as slaves; for slavery status was not of the making of the Father, but man’s making. Saint Paul reminded us in his letter to the Romans, how we were all enslaved through the first man, Adam, and how we perpetuated the slavery through our actual sins. The mission of the Son of Man is therefore to set us free through the grace of adoption, which he makes super-abundant for us. That we may enter into the state of grace and enjoy the status of sons, he instructs, saying: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; because the judgements you give are the judgements you will get, and the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given. The injunction God gave Adam and Eve in Eden was not to assume the position of a moral judge; It belongs to the Son who knows the Father’s will.  

The children of Israel, who were redeemed from slavery in Egypt and brought to the Promised Land of Canaan, served as a type for us. God brought them into the Promised Land with the Commandment to guide them to enter the status of sons of God. But they abandoned the Commandments and killed the prophets sent to call them to order. They presumed they were children of God by the fact that they were dwelling in the Promised Land. They could not make or understand the distinction between physical occupation of the land and the spiritual possession of God, who is our everlasting Promised Land or Kingdom. Hebrews 3:19 explains that their disobedience did not permit them to enter the rest of God for sons, even though they entered the physical land of Canaan. They were subsequently dispossessed of the physical land. “In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. He settled them in Halah on the Habor, a river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. This happened because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the grip of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” Their freedom was to model their lives on the Commandments of God. May we learn from their mistake to model our lives on the new commandment of love from Jesus Christ.

Let us pray: Grant, O Lord, that we may always revere and love your holy name, for you never deprive of your guidance those you set firm on the foundation of your love. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.