SPEAKER_00: Today's first reading is one of the saddest passages.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of Israel falls, Samaria is conquered, the people are deported, families are separated, the nation collapses.
SPEAKER_00: And what is striking is that the sacred author does not blame military weakness, political mistakes, or bad luck.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he gives a spiritual explanation.
SPEAKER_00: This came about because the children of Israel sinned against the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: For generations God had been patient.
SPEAKER_00: He sent prophets, he sent warnings, he called them back again and again he said, Return to me.
SPEAKER_00: But they would not listen.
SPEAKER_00: The reading repeats the tragedy of their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: They became stiff necked, they rejected the covenant, they ignored the warnings, and little by little they drifted away from God until eventually the consequences of their choices caught up with them.
SPEAKER_00: One of the great dangers in the spiritual life is that we often imagine that major falls happen suddenly, but they usually do not.
SPEAKER_00: A marriage rarely collapses in one day, a vocation rarely dies in one day, a friendship, a soul.
SPEAKER_00: They rarely grow cold in one day.
SPEAKER_00: Usually it begins with small compromises.
SPEAKER_00: A prayer that's skipped here, a confession delayed there, a sin tolerated, a resentment that's nurtured, a warning ignored?
SPEAKER_00: Over time the heart becomes less sensitive to God.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what happened to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The catastrophe began long before the armies arrived.
SPEAKER_00: The real defeat happened in their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: That brings us to the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Why do you notice a splinter in your brother's eye?
SPEAKER_00: But do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
SPEAKER_00: Notice what Jesus is doing.
SPEAKER_00: He's calling us to self-examination, to self awareness.
SPEAKER_00: The people of Israel spent generations looking elsewhere, except where the real problem was.
SPEAKER_00: They looked at political alliances, they looked at military threats, they looked at external circumstances, but they failed to look honestly at themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says that we often do the same thing here.
SPEAKER_00: We become experts at noticing the faults of others.
SPEAKER_00: We can spot someone else's pride.
SPEAKER_00: We can notice someone else's impatience and their selfishness and the hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_00: Yet we can remain blind to our own.
SPEAKER_00: The image Jesus uses is almost humorous.
SPEAKER_00: A man with a giant wooden beam sticking out of his eye, trying to perform delicate eye surgery on someone else.
SPEAKER_00: The point is obvious.
SPEAKER_00: The greatest obstacle to spiritual growth is often not our weakness, it is our blindness.
SPEAKER_00: Because what we do not acknowledge, we cannot surrender to God.
SPEAKER_00: The saints understood this.
SPEAKER_00: The closer they grew to God, the more aware they became of their own need for mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Not because they were becoming worse, but because they were seeing more clearly.
SPEAKER_00: That's the invitation for us today.
SPEAKER_00: As we begin this week, before we look at the faults of others, look honestly at your own heart.
SPEAKER_00: Where is the beam?
SPEAKER_00: What is the area where God has been speaking to you?
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it is pride.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's impatient, and you're engaging in gossip, lack of prayer, even maybe making excuses for habits and sins that you fall into.
SPEAKER_00: The beautiful thing is that God reveals these things not to shame us, but to heal us.
SPEAKER_00: The purpose of self-examination is not self-condemnation, it is to bring us to a conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Because once the beam is removed, we begin to see clearly.
SPEAKER_00: And when we see clearly, we become less judgmental, more compassionate, more patient, more merciful towards others.
SPEAKER_00: After all, a person who knows how much mercy he has received becomes much more willing to give mercy away.
SPEAKER_00: So today, instead of examining someone else's faults, let us examine our own hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Let us ask the Lord for the grace to see ourselves honestly, repent sincerely, and trust completely in his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: For the same God who warned Israel is the God who never stopped loving Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And the same God who reveals our sins is the God who desires to heal them all.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.