Iron & Altar

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother's eye. - Matthew 7:3, 5

They went after vanity and became vain. The Kings narrator's summary of Israel's fall is a single devastating observation: the people became what they chased. They followed the nations' gods and became like the nations they were supposed to distinguish themselves from. The accumulated rejection of every warning produced not just disobedience but transformation - they went after worthless things and became worthless.

The beam in the eye works the same way. The man who judges without self-examination has been shaped by what he is judging - he sees the fault most clearly because it is his own in some form. The seeing-without-noticing is the spiritually dangerous part: absolutely clear-eyed about the other, entirely blind to the parallel in himself.

Remove the beam first. That is the instruction, not: stop noticing. The noticing is sometimes right and the correction is sometimes needed. But the man who has done the beam-removal sees the splinter differently - with compassion rather than condemnation, with the self-knowledge that comes from having named his own.

Name the splinter you have been seeing most clearly in someone close to you this week. Name the beam version of it in yourself - the parallel fault, the shared weakness, the thing you share. Work on the beam for three days before returning to the splinter. The clarity that follows is worth the work. And carry [name]: Lord, help him remove the beam from his own eye so he can see clearly to help the brother he has been watching.

Lord, show me the beam I am not noticing - the one that is so large it has become invisible. And give me the self-knowledge that produces the compassion I cannot manufacture without it. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in you. Amen.