Brief synopsis of the readings: Our first reading comes from Sirach. This book contains advice from a father to a son. Here he is advising his son to be careful of his words as they can reveal his ignorance. “Do not praise a man before he has spoken, since this is the test of men.” In Luke’s Gospel Jesus warns his followers against blindness: “Can one blind man guide another? Surely both will fall into a pit.” He goes on to criticize the person who recognizes the splinter in another’s eye while ignoring the plank in his own. Jesus calls that person a hypocrite. Good trees do not produce rotten fruit. A good man draws what is good from the store of goodness in his heart; a bad man draws what is bad from the store of badness. For a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart.

Every time I read today’s Gospel I wonder how someone could walk around with a plank in his eye and not know it. Given there is no universal measurement for the size of a plank, the human eye is pretty small and any respectable plank would be much larger.

OK, of course Jesus is using hyperbole and he makes an interesting point. When we think about hypocrisy we may not have a working definition but we recognize it when we see it. So here’s my definition: we are hypocrites when we judge someone else harshly while judging ourselves generously on the same issue.

This is hard to talk about but we are all aware of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Sexual abuse is sinful enough and sexual abuse of children is sinful beyond words. But when a priest commits this sin it’s unimaginable.

It’s unimaginable because priests are seen as moral authorities, the men we go to for guidance and forgiveness. They live one life in the light, and another in the dark. I wasn’t abused but I knew some of these priests and several of them were the harshest, most unforgiving of priests. May God grant them more mercy than I would give.

Those are extreme examples but we see hypocrisy all around us. On one extreme we see people who have no understanding of hypocrisy and believe that anything they do is justified. We call them psychopaths.

On the other extreme we find people who are so terrified with hypocrisy that they paralyze themselves. They judge others with generosity and themselves harshly. Their intentions are good but they condemn themselves to a life of misery and paralysis. We need to find a middle ground.

Let’s face it: We all live with splinters and planks and oftentimes they are so close to us that we can’t see them in ourselves. So how do splinters and planks advance the Kingdom of God?

Glad you asked. Several times in Scripture we are asked to gently correct the ones we love. It’s not easy and many of us choose to hide. But if we don’t recognize the splinters in each other and they don’t recognize the planks in us we will eventually go blind.

When I used to counsel married couples I was always interested in how they handled conflict. Unfortunately (and I briefly spoke about this last week) some use splinters and planks as ammunition against each other. These marriages are not sustainable; they either need to change or recognize their marriage won’t survive.

Others didn’t feel they could point out the other’s blindness. Oftentimes they were afraid of conflict and feared a bad result. I understood this but it could eventually make their marriage distant and fearful.

But when a couple trusts their love for each other enough that they can point out what they can see but their spouse cannot. When that happens they both benefit, as well as all those around them. They come to each other secure in the awareness that their love is primary.

Interestingly my best example of this from Scripture comes not from a married couple but from two rivals. In the earliest days of the Church we recognize Peter and Paul as the earliest leaders. Both faced a critical decision: when Gentiles choose to follow Christ, should they become observant Jews first? Paul was clear that they don’t need to while Peter waffled over it. He feared that he would lose popularity with other Jews if he held Paul’s view. In Paul’s letter to the Galations (2:11-14) he recounts how he caught Peter eating with Gentiles (which was prohibited according to Jewish law) but hiding that fact from other Jews.

Paul called him on it. He denounced Peter for eating with Gentiles when nobody was looking but not eating with them in public. Peter, to his credit, recognized Paul was right and changed his ways. We Christians today are not a subset of Judaism because of this.

Let us be Paul and Peter. Paul acted out of love in correcting Peter and this went a long way toward their place in our faith history.

We all have our blind spots and we all see the blind spots in each other. If we ignore them out of fear or anger we spiral down. But if we allow others to recognize and point them out we spiral up. We cannot remove a splinter we don’t see unless someone points it out.

Maybe it’s an unconscious bias or a comment we didn’t think was hurtful. I’m not going into detail but I once made a comment to a friend as a joke and didn’t realize he didn’t see it as a joke but as something deeply hurtful. When he had the courage to confront me I was at first humiliated and horrified. I feared my blunder would cost our friendship. But I apologized and explained that my lack of judgement. It’s been nearly 30 years and we’re still friends.

If you see a plank in my eye, you have my permission to tell me.