Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

They went after vanity and became vain. The Israel narrative is the cautionary tale about formation by attention: what you consistently follow shapes you into its image. They followed the nations' gods and became like the nations. The repeated small choices accumulated into a character transformation.

Stop judging so you will not be judged. In your twenties the judging impulse is strong - the world is being sorted and evaluated, standards are being calibrated, people are being assessed. The Sermon on the Mount doesn't prohibit the discernment that is part of forming your own character. It prohibits the judging that comes without self-examination - the splinter-focus that ignores the beam.

Remove the beam from your own eye first. The self-examination is the prerequisite for genuine help. The clarity that comes from having named your own version of the fault is the clarity that produces compassion rather than condemnation in the helping.

Name the fault you judge most readily in others. Ask: is this a fault I share in some form? Examine that version in yourself this week. The answer to that examination is the beginning of the clarity Jesus describes.

Lord, show me what I am not seeing in myself so clearly. Remove the beam. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in you. Amen.