Friday of 23rd Week, Year II: reflection

Theme: Where should correction and change start?

Reading: Lk 6:39–42

Dear friends in Christ, being our brothers’ keepers is one of our responsibilities as Christians. Correcting our brothers and sisters when they make mistakes and guiding them in their affairs are just few of the numerous tasks that come with this responsibility.

In today’s gospel reading, our Lord Jesus instructs us on where to begin these tasks of correcting and guiding our brothers and sisters who err. He says we must start from a proper self-examination of ourselves before going out to correct others.

Thorough self-examination will help us to know whether we are guilty of the same error we are seeking to correct in others. If it happens that we are guilty of the same error, then, the first place to start this correction would not be our brothers and sisters but ourselves. This is because a person who is in error does not have the moral justification to enforce correction or change in others who are in the same error. He said, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye,” because the blind cannot lead the blind.

Friends, Jesus is not asking us to close our eyes to people’s mistakes, rather, He is telling us that if we are guilty of the same mistake we wish to correct in others or guilty of a habit we wish to change in others, then, we must first start the process of correction or change from ourselves.

The benefit of the clarion call from Jesus can be seen in today’s first reading where St Paul told the Corinthians: “I punish my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified.” Indeed, it would be very tragic if we still get punished for the same error we corrected in others. It will be a sad story if a teacher failed the same paper he helped others to pass.

May the labour of your hands today bear good fruits, Amen.

Fr Isaac C. Chima.