Jesus said to his disciples:
"Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Recently we read about the call to be holy as God himself is holy, and to be perfect as God himself is perfect. But those lofty concepts were easy to misconstrue. The Pharisees imagined themselves to have holiness, but of a sort that made it necessary for them to separate themselves from others, and to be perfect, but in a way that was merely external and performative. But by calling us to be merciful Jesus made what he was asking of us more concrete.
Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Judging and condemning were the preoccupation of the Pharisees, by which they convinced themselves of their superiority over others. It was not simply an understanding that recognized sin for what it was, because such knowledge could have been helpful in reaching out to sinners. It was rather a false puffed up knowledge that separated them from those they considered sinners. Therefore they complained when Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors and did not recognize themselves as also sick and in need of the same Divine Physician.
We too have issues with judging and condemning others, in thoughts we entertain, if not in outright action. We have hard time avoiding comparing ourselves with others in order to achieve a kind of self validation that hinges upon the imagined fact that we are doing better than they. And when we rely on this sort of affirmation we set ourselves up for disappoint, both at our own failures, and perhaps worse, at the success of others. Some of us have elevated judgment to a meta skill wherein the only ones we will judge are those who seem to us to be judging others, who won't seem to just live and let live. But every judgment of the sort condemned by Jesus is unhelpful, and not a firm foundation for our self image. We must, if we are to stop judging, find a better foundation in Christ himself.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
In this statement of Jesus we find a law of the spiritual life: that we when we need something, we should seek not to get it, but to give it away. Only in doing so will we truly find it. This is of course easy to say, but hard to realize and put into practice. But by repeated attempts to practice this spiritual law we will come to realize just how reliable is the promise that underlies it.
The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver (see Second Corinthians 9:6).
Instead of a conception of holiness that turns us inward and makes us try to justify ourselves, one that allows is to be content with merely external compliance, Jesus is calling is to one which sends us outward to our neighbors and fellow sinners in order to share the mercy we ourselves have discovered as the only firm basis for our lives. Just as Daniel, righteous though he was, implicated himself in the sins of his people in order to bring down mercy upon them, so too must we.
But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!
Yet we rebelled against you
and paid no heed to your command, O LORD, our God,
to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.
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