Judging Others

 

17^th Wk (Tue – Mt 13:36-43)

I.     In our lives , there are matters which are beyond our control, and which we simply have to entrust to the mercy of God. There are matters which we cannot change.

-          An example of this, is the reality that the Church is made of sinners and saints. We have no control over this, because God willed it so. He willed that the Church be made of good and bad men and women. That is how the Church is. There will be dirty and clean people in the Church. There will be saints and public sinners, too.

-          And the Lord accepts this reality. He accepts the reality of sinners in the Church. He understands them and is compassionate to them. He supports them in their struggle to be holy again. If God does, we should not do otherwise.

-          We should not judge our fellow sinners.

II. There is an old saying that fits here, it goes like this:  “There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that it is not right for any of us to think badly of the rest of us”.

-          But we do judge people. Remember:  each person has “two” sides. Good side and bad side. Unfortunately, when someone has a bad side and a good side, we seem to see bad side first.

-          Eg. A big black dot on a white paper. We tend to see the dark before we see the light; we tend to see the negative before we see the positive; we tend to see the evil before the good. And that one-sidedness spoils our judgment.

-          Eg. Isang dental officer, for 30 years in the service, mabuti at matino sya, and for just one mistake nagkasala siya. We easily condemn  that person. Nalimutan na natin, lahat ng ginawa niyang mabuti. Tanong: Is that fair?

-          That is how unfair we humans are to one another. But God has another scale of values. As the French people say:  “Because God knows all, he forgives all”. Hindi po ba maganda, na tayo, who do not know too much, would be slow to judge one another?

III. Mga kapatid, kung matalino tayo, we should do what the farmer in the Gospel did: he left the weeds and the good grain grow together. And then at harvest time, they were easy to separate from one another. Why? Because as the saying goes, ‘By their fruit you shall know them’.

-          people are judged not by the way their life begins, but by the way it ends. Judgment is always at the end of the process, not during the process. As the saying goes, “All is well that ends well”.

-          A saint is someone with a past. A sinner is someone with a future. And so, we should not judge one another.

IV. Mga kapatid, if we are slow to judge, we hardly make mistake. We never go wrong by NOT judging people. Wait and see.