VIII Sunday C – The Plain Speech
Readings: Sir 27:5-8; 1 Cor 15:54-58; Lk 6:39-45
The Gospel passage of Lk 6:39-45 gives us some passages from the discourse Jesus gives on the plain after spending the night in prayer (Lk 6:12) and after calling the twelve to be his apostles (Lk 6:13-14). Most of the phrases brought together in this discourse were spoken on other occasions, however, Luke, imitating Matthew, brings them together here in this Sermon on the Plain.
The first saying is against claiming to lead others, “Can a blind man lead another blind man?”
Scribes and Pharisees were sinning in presumption. They thought themselves, in fact, in duty to lead others toward faithfulness to God. Everyone is blind to the mystery of God. We all need Jesus to open our eyes, for He alone has seen the Father, He alone knows Him, He alone can reveal them to us. Scribes and Pharisees, rejecting Jesus, rejecting His revelation of God the merciful Father, persist in their blindness. Only if we acknowledge our own blindness and welcome the light, which Jesus gives us about God, the light of divine mercy, can we walk toward the true goal, which is the Father’s embrace. This path is called conversion. Only if we place ourselves in a state of conversion can we lead others.
The second saying is about discipleship: “The disciple is not more than the master, but the well-prepared disciple will be like the master.”
The true master does not give lessons; he lives with his pupils. His subject is himself, his testimony of life, his way of living the things he teaches. The teacher is the model or example to be imitated (Jn. 13:13-15), coming to identify with him: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
The third saying is about fraternal correction: “Why do you look at the mote in your brother’s eye and fail to notice the beam in your own eye?”
Scribes and Pharisees were very good at pointing out even the slightest transgressions of the law by others, yet they persisted in keeping the beam, that is, the utmost transgression of the law, in their own eye: “Go and learn what it means: ‘Mercy I want and not sacrifices. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mt. 9:13). Those who do not recognize their need for God’s mercy, those who do not recognize what God’s mercy has forgiven them, are unable to correct others, to make them more faithful to God. Fraternal correction is practicable only by those who recognize themselves as children forgiven by the merciful Father and thus brothers among brothers.
The fourth saying emphasizes that every tree is recognized by its fruit, as the First Reading already proclaimed (Sir 27:5-8).
Beware, then, of judging, of condemning a priori those who do not think as we do: what matters is to produce fruits of mercy, forgiveness, service, peace. And whoever does this is in any case blessed by God (Mt 25).
The fifth saying recalls the primacy of interiority: “The good man draws out good from the good treasure of his heart; the bad man from his bad treasure draws out evil, because the mouth speaks from the fullness of the heart.”
While in our Western thinking the heart is the center of feelings, of affections, for Hebrews it is the seat of thought and will, it is the personal conscience, the innermost “I.” This is why Jesus says, “Why do you think evil things in your hearts?” (Mt 9:4), obviously meaning the heart as the seat of thought. Just as he says, “Out of the heart come evil purposes” (Mt 15:19), meaning in the heart the center of the will, of basic choices.
Jesus is very clear. There is nothing external to us that is impure, but purity or impurity resides in the heart of man: “For from the heart come evil purposes, murders, adulteries, prostitutions, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Mt 15:10-20).
In the heart of man dwells the Word of God: “This Word is very near you, it is in your mouth and in your heart, that you may put it into practice” (Deut. 30:14; cf. Rom. 10:8). But it is also true that “sin is crouching at your door; toward you is its instinct” (Gen. 4:7). That is why every day we have to choose between having a “heart that listens” (lev shomeà: 1 Kings 3:9) or a situation of sclerocardium, the “hardening of the heart,” the great sin of Pharaoh (Ex 4:21; 7:3) and of anyone who closes himself to God’s plan (Sl 4:3; 17:10; 81:13Mt 19:8; Mk 10:5; 16:14…). Therefore, Paul exhorts us in the Second Reading, “remain steadfast and unshakable, always lavishing yourselves in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:54-58).