Today’s Gospel passage sums up much of what we have been
talking about the past couple of weeks:
“Stop judging and you will not
be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will
be forgiven. . . . For the measure with which you measure will in return be
measured out to you.” (Luke 6:37-38)
There will come a time, Jesus tells us, when everything
will be known, when what we have said and done in secret will no longer be
secret. This passage used to frighten me, and it probably should frighten all
of us. Are you ready to have everything be known about you?
But as the years have gone on, I have come to see things
in a different way, and that is because I have had experiences, in the
confessional, in spiritual direction and in several sorts of encounter groups,
when almost everything has been known. And during experiences such as
that, what results is not judgment or condemnation, but rather an outpouring of
love and compassion and empathy and understanding.
I guess you have to experience things like that to
understand fully. I guess you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to
“bare your soul” to another human being or to a group of people, to grasp the
reality of a compassion and understanding that is hard to put into words. If
you have ever shared a deep and painful (and possibly shameful) secret with a
friend or loved one, then perhaps you, too, can grasp what I’m getting at here.
Those who will not do these things, on the other hand,
are still stuck back in a realm where judging, condemning and lack of
forgiveness make for a hostile and terrifying world without hope or love or
peace of soul. If you find yourself in this realm, beg the Lord to grant you
deliverance. Beg him to help you open up and get free.
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