Jesus comes as an ophthalmologist to heal our eyesight - (Lk 6:39-45)
I have noticed that taking pictures has shapedour eyesight: it helps us see more beauty, more moments that are worth capturing. At the same time, I started to wonder how it is possible to look at something and see something special in it or not to see anything at all. You can live in the same world and see it completely differently. Where do these differences come from? They are in us: in our sensitivity, in our attitude to the world around us, in our approach to life.
Jesus - an ophthalmologist
In today's Gospel, Jesus comes as an ophthalmologist who wants to heal our eyesight. First, he picks up a sight defect: Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
If we focus on the other person's weaknesses, see them through the prism of sin, and see the negative sharply and the positive details blur, then we are losing our eyesight. And here, the correction from farsightedness to myopia comes to our aid. We must look at ourselves in truth so that we can say with the Psalmist: "I know the greatness of my guilt and my sin always before my eyes."
A person who has his sins before his eyes naturally ceases to focus on the sins of others. And even when we perceive them, we see them through our own prism: the prism of the sinner. And then we can look at others with mercy, understanding. "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." (cf. Lk 6:37-38)
We have a heart problem
But even recognizing our sin is not enough, because ultimately, it is not about focusing on sin, evil, and weakness. Jesus says today: “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks." (cf. Lk 6:45). There has been, and will be in the world, both good and evil. In man there was, is and will be good and bad. But it depends on us what we want to be getting out, for what we reach. How we use our free will.
Searching in the world around us, first of all, the manifestations of evil, threats, and sin, is what really tells about our heart. A heart that needs conversion. If we constantly complain about "these times", we speak badly of others, it means that not the times and others have the problem, but us. We have a problem in our hearts.
The world is full of beauty and good. People are full of beauty and goodness. Sometimes it is all hidden and needs to be discovered and brought to the surface. Even where there is sin and weakness, even there you can find goodness, beauty, sensitivity. And then it is up to us what we get out of it. We will bring out what we have in our hearts. That is why we need Jesus to convert our hearts so that they regain God's original gaze: "And God saw that everything He made was very good." We need the eyes of Jesus who, as he passed Levi's the tax collector’s booth, "looked at him with love" and brought out good from him, from the tax collector who was then synonymous with the sinner. This is God's evangelical view of the world and people.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george