A self-critical conscious Choice

WORD 2day: Monday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 22, 2020: 2 Kings 17: 5-8, 13-15, 18; Matthew 7: 1-5

Judge not, and you shall not be judged, instructs Jesus today. Not to judge others does not mean justifying whatever he or she does. Between judging the other and justifying the other there is an attitude that Jesus deems Reign-worthy and that is, a Self-critical Conscious Choice.

The first need is to be self critical. When I find something wrong in the other, charity requires that I first become critical of myself... it is seeing the log that is in your eye before offering to remove the splinter from your neighbour's. Once I am aware that I too possess the same, or a similar, or a bigger weakness, my attitude changes completely. I am in a  position to act with prudence and humility.

The second need is to set the home tidy first. "Do not do like they do" ... that was the instruction that the Lord had given the people when they come into contact with other people in their wanderings. St. Paul too has a similar warning for us, isn't it? Writing to the Romans, he tells us: do not be conformed to the world, instead be transformed in the Lord (cf. Rom 12).

The third need is to make a conscious choice. Do not let yourself be carried away by your emotions and the anger of the moment. How many times this happens, that we lose our cool in a moment of restlessness, and feel bad to have said something or done something that we can never undo! If we judge and react to our brothers and sisters merely in the whiff of the moment, it would not be a conscious choice, and later we will have no other choice than to regret it all our life.  

In short, the Word invites us today to live our daily lives conscious of who we are, what we are called for and where we are bound to! Let us take our daily life seriously and live on a daily basis with sound self-critical conscious choices... the Word shall be the lamp to that path!