Reflection for Monday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Word

By


Fr. Aloysius Santiago sdb
Rector and Parish Priest
Don Bosco Shrine
Lingarajapuram, Bangalore

Mathew 6: 24

Mathew 7: 1-2

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.


Today's Reflection

As for Abram in the 1st reading, it is quite obvious what the Lord sees in him. The Lord saw many possibilities in him. The Lord saw the goodness in him.

In fact the Lord sees the goodness in all He has created.

In the creation story, whatever God created, He saw it as good.

And God sees the goodness in each of us.

That tells a lot about who God is.

And what do we see in others?

What we see in others tells a lot about ourselves.

May we have the eyes of God to see the good in others.

We live in a society which tends to rush to judgement very quickly.

When some damning report is issued there is an immediate search for people to blame.

It can be very easy for those who have never been in a particular situation to blame others for their actions in that situation.

Condemning others can come all too easy to us.

The gospel reading this morning suggests that Jesus was very aware of that.

He warns against rushing to premature judgement, ‘do not judge and you will not be judged’.

Perhaps Jesus was more aware than we are of the danger that in judging others we can easily get it very wrong.

He understood that our limited vision can make it very difficult for us to judge fairly.

Our limited vision comes from the many failings in ourselves.


GOD BLESS YOU 

Good morning. Have a nice safe day and a fabulous week ahead.

Happy feast of St. Aloysius of Gonzaga.


That seems to be the point of the humorous image in the second part of the gospel reading.


We cannot attempt to take a splinter out of the eye of someone else while all the time we have a plank in our own eye.


We need to attend to the plank in our own eye first.


We need to put our energies into renewing ourselves rather than condemning others.


Only then can we begin to see as the Lord sees.


Resolution

Let's resolve to judge a tree from its fruit and not by its leaves


† Saint of the Day

(June 21)

✠ St. Aloysius Gonzaga ✠

Member of the Society of Jesus and Confessor:

Born: March 9, 1568

Castiglione delle Stiviere, Duchy of Mantua, Holy Roman Empire

Died: June 21, 1591 (Aged 23)

Rome, Papal States

Venerated in: Catholic Church

Beatified: October 19, 1605

Pope Paul V

Canonized: December 31, 1726

Pope Benedict XIII

Major shrine: Church of Sant'Ignazio, Rome, Italy

Feast: June 21

Patronage:

Young students, Christian youth, Jesuit scholastics, The blind, AIDS patients, AIDS care-givers

Saint Aloysius de Gonzaga, SJ was an Italian aristocrat who became a member of the Society of Jesus.

While still a student at the Roman College, he died as a result of caring for the victims of a serious epidemic.

He was beatified in 1605 and canonized in 1726.

The most remarkable thing is the humility of St. Aloysius. Humility is truth.

It was the truth that led him to consider his fault so grave that he called it the gravest sin of his life.

What becomes transparent in this episode is the complete innocence and sanctity of St. Aloysius Gonzaga. It is so brilliant that it is blinding.