Luke 6:39–45 ESV – Bible Gateway
In today’s Gospel, Jesus set forth a series of what Peter Kreeft calls comic analogies. Humor often uses the element of surprise or a reversal, and this follows up well considering the Beatitudes and this third part of the Sermon on the Plain. We have, likely, heard these short parables multiple times, and they have become proverbial such that we can miss what quite funny contrasts they are. The blind leading the blind is such a great mental picture, and the idea of a guy with a builder’s plank in his eye taking a splinter out of someone else’s eye seems more Looney Tunes than sacred scripture. We can quickly think of Jesus always being so severe and can miss the playfulness in his preaching at times. On this aspect, I think of the end of G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:
He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
This is not simply a case of Jesus telling his listeners to mind their own business because you also have similar or other sins. It is a call to repentance to help out our brother truly. A call to self-knowledge, which is a path to humility. To be aware of our spiritual blindness and how it hinders our lives in giving ourselves to others.
Jesus continues on this theme by comparing the good tree and the bad tree and the fruits they bear. A theme used in the Old Testament and one Jesus uses elsewhere regarding the fruit we should be bearing. The early Christians also used this biblical theme of two ways as a means of instruction in moral conduct.
I partly see this comparison as the full integration of our Christian lives. By building up the virtues through grace and constant practice, we build up that good treasure within our hearts. These virtues will subsequently provide the means for us to act in adverse situations. If we provide ourselves with the toxins of rash judgment, constantly attacking others, and imbibing in various forms of tribalism—we can not help but create evil fruits.
In contrast, St Bede explains:
“A person who has a treasure of patience and of perfect charity in his heart yields excellent fruit; he loves his neighbour and has all the other qualities Jesus teaches; he loves his enemies, does good to him who hates him, blesses him who curses him, prays for him who calumniates him, does not react against him who attacks him or robs him; he gives to those who ask, does not claim what they have stolen from him, wishes not to judge and does not condemn, corrects patiently and affectionately those who err. But the person who has in his heart the treasure of evil does exactly the opposite: he hates his friends, speaks evil of him who loves him and does all the other things condemned by the Lord” (In Lucae Evangelium expositio, 2, 6).
If we are indeed to be a disciple of Jesus, we have to learn our strengths and weaknesses. With Lent upcoming, it provides us with a time of reappraisal in where we are along the path. This discernment is not easy, and with our spiritual blind spots, we can be blind in leading ourselves.
Paragraph 2005 in the Catechism says:
We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved.[1] However, according to the Lord’s words—“Thus you will know them by their fruits”[2]—reflection on God’s blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.
A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: “Asked if she knew that she was in God’s grace, she replied: ‘If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.’ ”[3]
Sources
- The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz
- Navarre, Saint Luke’s Gospel (2005)
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C
- Catholic Productions, Commentaries by Brant Pitre
- Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
