Beyond Splinters and Wooden Beams
By: Mariel De Luna
Gospel | Luke 6:39-45
“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?”
Every time I hear this line from Jesus, I can’t help but laugh a bit to myself because of Jesus’ choice of metaphor. What does having a wooden beam in your eye even look like? I can’t imagine it without coming up with ridiculous images that make me grin. But the amusement is always short-lived as its message hits me once again. This Sunday’s Gospel always reminds me to never judge other people for their faults since I suffer from my own set of faults. However, reading this Gospel again after a recently concluded retreat, I found myself looking more closely at this particular question from Jesus.
Why do we fail to notice the wooden beams in our eyes? Wooden beams are HUGE compared to splinters, yet it is the splinter in our neighbor’s eye that we easily see. Are we so busy looking at other people and other things that we barely look at ourselves? (And by “looking at ourselves”, I don’t mean looking at our appearance. We do that quite a lot already.) How aware are we of what’s in our minds and our hearts, and the words and actions that spring from them?
How aware are we of ourselves? If we never see the person beyond the faults, the answer is: not enough.
Something that St. Teresa of Calcutta said has remained imprinted on my mind ever since I’ve read it: “Some saints described themselves as terrible criminals because they saw God, they saw themselves—and they saw the difference.” It may sound silly that holy saints saw themselves as “criminals”. But, a lot of them truly did see themselves that way. And I think it’s because gazing at Jesus Christ crucified at the wooden beams of the Cross made them see clearly their own wooden beams—that they were sinners in need of God’s mercy. They had incredible self-awareness because they developed, by allowing God’s grace to work on them, a deep awareness of God. As a result, they were filled with deep understanding of and compassion towards other people. They were able to look beyond the splinters in their brothers’ eyes and see fellow brothers who were suffering from their own wooden beams.
When we find ourselves judging other people badly in our thoughts or condemning people with hurtful words in person or in social media, it’s time to pause and ask ourselves: how is my relationship with God? Do I spend some time to talk to him and to get to know him so that I become more aware of his presence in my life, and in the process become more aware of myself, too?
Lord, may you give us the grace to become more aware of you and the grace to become more aware of ourselves so that we may obtain the grace of becoming more compassionate towards our neighbors.
Our Lady, Refuge of Sinners, pray for us.
