Today the Word invites us to go deeper into our hearts in order to find the place where our actions and our intentions can become more united. How interesting: today we find Jesus "judging" the Scribes and the Pharisees. As we learned yesterday, the type of judging that we are allowed to do is the kind that makes us "evaluate in order to correct" another. This is what Jesus is doing. But, Why is He so upset? because "All their works are performed to be seen." (Mat 23:5). They have confused a basic tenets of religion: what we do must match what is in our hearts, and viceversa.
How easy it is to focus only on the externals, believing that if we look holy, then we must be. Why are they doing things in order to be seen? Because, it will give them satisfaction and made them feel good. What was really motivating them is pride. Usually, Pride leads us to a very dark place and always creates conflicts in our relationships.
How does Pride work? Pride, the 'general' of the army of sins, makes us believe that "our way" is always the best way, our opinion is the best, etc. Pride makes us grow attached to things rather than people. Pride makes us want to get more things or protect the ones we have. Now, imagine what happens when two proud people get closer to one another: each want something that the other has. Something similar happens in our spiritual life. Just think about most of our conflicts about liturgy. They each based on "what we like," or "what is supposed to be." We want to see "our" way accepted by everybody else. What we want becomes more important than what God says, or what the Church wants us to do. As matter of fact, God's Word and the Church's teaching can easily become secondary if not totally unimportant.
What can we do? There is a virtue that allows us to act properly: Humility. This is not an easy virtue to understand and I believe there is as much misunderstanding with this virtue as with the concept of Judging. Humility is not an invitation to live with low-self esteem or claiming that we are not good or worthy of anything. Rather the contrary! Humility allows us to tell ourselves the truth about who we are and what we can do. It brings things in perspective and allows us to appreciate what others can do so that balance can be always maintained. Humility allows us to see each other as necessary, as important, as required so that we can really grow and become better persons. Humility makes us understand that the other is a gift to us rather than someone I can exploit in order to feel better about myself.
Humility is also the doorkeeper of God's grace, according to James 4:6. As we continue to look into our hearts and face our tendency to judge people (in the negative way), we want to start taking our first steps towards the practice of Humility. James, in his letter (chapter 4) tells us that a good place to start practicing this virtue is by stop talking evil, trashing, others, especially other Christians. When we speak evil of others we become their judges and are certainly motivated by pride. Guess what kind of results will this produce?
How can we grow in humility? By remaining grounded in Jesus' Words. Only He can tell us how to live our lives properly and only He really helps us understand the motivation of our hearts. Let's commit ourselves to live the Word of God at all times. Only in this way, humility will grow in us and with it we will be able to see each person we meet with new eyes.
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