Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them as it had upon us at the beginning, and I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift he gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?

Sometimes we are tempted to put people into boxes. These people are good. These people are bad. These people are holy. These people are immoral. However, no one is guaranteed salvation and no one is beyond redemption. People are bigger than the boxes we want to put them in and if we look at a person as believe they are irredeemable, then perhaps we should look in the mirror, too. Jesus didn’t look at sinners and see only their sins. He looked at them and saw their potential, too. He saw the Divine Image behind each individual’s disfigurations. The Good News, the sacraments, and the Church couldn’t remain hidden in Israel precisely because of this universal, shared, Divine Imprint on every human being. Jews and gentles were made in God’s Likeness and so they both became heirs to His Kingdom. They both have the opportunity to believe in Jesus Christ and receive the same Holy Spirit. It is God’s Infinite Image within us that makes putting anyone into a box impossible... because within us all is the potential to become uniquely Christ.

How can we keep ourselves from putting others into boxes? How can we overcome our biases, prejudices, and opinions and see others with Jesus-colored glasses? How can we learn to love the Divine Image within each individual?

O Lord, help us to be as welcoming of others as you are.

Amen.

Twelfth Monday of Ordinary Time

“Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother's eye.”

Jesus tells us to stop judging others and look to fix our own sins first. It’s easier to see other people’s faults and to judge them by their actions, but this is not why we are here on earth. We are not meant to be judges. God is the only reliable judge of what is good and evil. We tend to hear and see what we want to about others. We are biased by our own agendas, moral blind spots, and experiences. We give certain people the benefits of the doubt, while others we don’t trust at all. However, we do not know what is in the hearts of other people, only God knows that. This is why we do not condemn others. We might not condone what they do—after all there are actions which are evil and that we should not stand for. But what we don’t do is make a judgment in regards to another person’s soul. This is why Jesus reminds us to look to ourselves first. We are sinners, too. We might not see our sins as being as bad as someone else’s, but in the end we are not sinless. So before we confront others about their failures and imperfections, we should first address our own. And that can take our entire lives.

Who are the people we have condemned in our lives? What are our sins? How can we learn to love the sinner, but hate the sin?

O Lord, help us remove the beams from our eyes so that we can see how best to know, love and serve our neighbors.

Amen.