Eighth Sunday in Ordinary time

It’s very easy to find fault with things and people. No matter how good a person or a thing may be, it is easy to find some fault with them. And while it is easy to find faults in others, it is just as easy to overlook our own faults. Or, as Jesus says in this Sunday’s Gospel: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” Notice the difference: a speck compared to a log. A small fault compared with a really big one. Why are we like that? Is it because we are naturally jealous, envious, or basically negative and critical? Or have we lived with our own faults for so many years that we have grown accustomed to them, or perhaps have never known that we had the problem?
This Sunday’s Gospel from St. Luke follows immediately upon his beautiful explanation of unconditional love, whereby we are to love even our enemies, as we read in last Sunday’s Gospel. This kind of love is not natural. It can only be achieved through God’s grace and the result of hard work and dedication. But this is precisely the challenge of this Sunday’s Gospel for each one of us: to be so positive about all other people that we can accept them for who and what they are, to overcome those occasions when we tend to misjudge others, and to stress the good in others, hoping they can do the same for us.
It sounds like a kind of Christian utopia, doesn’t it? But Jesus came to change the world, to transform the world according to the will of His Father. So, this Sunday’s Gospel is a challenge—a bold challenge—for each one of us followers of Jesus. Yet the question is: Are we able to accept this challenge as followers of Jesus? How should we do it?
Fr. Aegidius Warsito, SCJ