Not to Judge Others

CONSIDERATION. “Judge not, and you shall not be judged; condemn not, and you shall not be condemned; for with what judgement you judge, you shall be judged: and why seest thou the mote that is in thy brothers eye, and seest not the beam that is in thy own eye?” Powerful are the words which our Lord uses to induce us to abstain from judging our neighbours. These judgements are almost always presumptuous, and often very sinful; because we can only judge from appearances, which are always deceitful; because we often go so far as to judge and condemn their intentions, which God alone can penetrate, and alone has the right to judge; finally, because these judgements are dictated almost always by jealousy or wounded self-love, which blinds us to such a degree that, as our Lord says in figurative language, we do not remark in ourselves faults and failings a thousand times worse than those which we see in others.

APPLICATION. In practice, when we are tempted to despise, to judge, or condemn our brethren, let us think of those divine words on which we have meditated, or of those other words which also fell from our Saviour’s lips: “As long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me.” Let us think that what seems blamable or even sinful to us may be perhaps a meritorious act of virtue in the eyes of God, who alone can justly understand our actions and intentions; or rather let us say to ourselves, “Why occupy myself with others? It is not for their acts, but for my own, that I shall have to answer to the Judge of all men. If I had always acted in this way, what a loss of time, what troubles, and what sins I should have avoided!”

~From Practical Meditations For Every Day of the Year on the Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ (first translated from the French in 1868)