I usually cringe when someone says to me, “That’s not my job!” It is counter to my belief in taking personal responsibility. But there is one thing that is not our job: judging others. In this episode of By Your Life, we discuss the pitfalls of judging.

Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2020/20_07_19.mp3

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 19, 2020

Welcome to the one hundred and twenty-first episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

Taking Personal Responsibility

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. (Cycle A) This week, Jesus continues to speak to the people in parables. At Mass one morning this week, the priest shared a story about one of his first classes in seminary. It was a humanities course on Greek art and literature. He said the professor did a wonderful job bringing the subject to life. Fr. Tim really enjoyed the lectures so much, he could have listened to him all morning. But then came judgment day when he realized that he should have been taking notes and paying much closer attention in class. He forgot that he was going to be held accountable for knowing what was taught. He got a C on that exam.

In sharing that story, Fr. Tim wasn’t preaching on this Sunday’s gospel, but he could have been. In the parable of the Weeds among the Wheat, Jesus tells an intriguing story, but let’s not enjoy the plot so much that we miss the point. When the disciples asked him to explain the meaning of the parable, Jesus said, “Just as weeds are collected and burned [up] with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” (Mt 13:40-42) Make no doubt about it. There will be a judgement day and we will be held accountable. “Whoever has ears ought to hear.” (Mt 13:43)

But, That’s Not My Job

However, there is another point to this parable. When the slaves asked the householder if they should pull up the weeds, he said, “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.’” (Mt 13:29-30) In the explanation of the parable of the weeds, the emphasis is on the fearful end of the wicked, but the parable itself concentrates on being patient with them until judgment time.

The refusal of the householder to allow his slaves to separate the wheat from the weeds while they are still growing is a warning to the disciples and to us not to attempt to anticipate the final judgment of God. In its present stage, the kingdom is composed of the good and the bad. The judgment of God alone will eliminate the sinful. Until then our job is to be patient and preach repentance.

The Good Flourishes Among the Bad

Scripture scholars think that when referring to the weed in his parable, Jesus was speaking of darnel, a poisonous weed that in its first stage of growth resembles wheat. Darnel usually grows in the same production zones as wheat and was a serious weed of cultivation until modern sorting machinery enabled darnel seeds to be separated efficiently from wheat seed.  So even to this day, farmers know to be patient because if you pull up the weeds, you might take up the wheat with it.

Unfortunately, this is life. The good and the bad do grow up together. We cannot escape pain and suffering, or the corrupt, harmful, dangerous, and immoral things of this world. They are all around us.

But, in some ways, the good can only flourish in the presence of the bad. St Mother Teresa wouldn’t be the saint we know and love without the poorest of the poor in the streets of Calcutta. St. Pope John Paul II might not have become the saint he is without his experiences in Nazi and communist Poland. St. Maria Goretti, whose feast day we celebrated earlier this month, would not have been an example of the grace of forgiveness had she not been stabbed by Alessandro Serenelli.

So, while we are to know the difference between good and evil and make our own choices accordingly, lest we find ourselves in the eternal fiery furnace, it is not our job to judge others as being good or bad. St. Mother Teresa said, “If you judge people you have no time to love them.”

That reminds me of a story that Stephen Covey shared in one of his books. He told about a man who was riding the subway early one morning on the weekend, so the subway car was nearly empty, except for a father and his three children. The children were unruly, climbing all over the seats and screaming as they played. The father just sat there, as if he didn’t notice their wild behavior until he looked up and saw the critical glare of the man watching him.

The man wondered what was wrong with this guy. Couldn’t he control his kids? How rude he was to just let them go on disrupting the otherwise peaceful morning. Then the father spoke and apologized to the man. He said that they had just left the hospital where his wife and the children’s mother had died. He was processing how he was going to go on without her and was lost in his thoughts. The man felt like a total jerk for the way he had judged the father. “If you judge people you have no time to love them.”

But how do we love those whose behaviors are nasty, rude, immoral, or just downright evil? How do we love those whose life experiences have made them different than us? How do we love those who hate us? The answer is simple: Begin with prayer.

Judging others affects our relationships

Early in my career, I was promoted to a new role in a new division of a major telecommunications company. It was a position that had oversight of several “intrapreneurial” businesses. Even though I had responsibility for assuring that the businesses were on track, the general managers of the businesses were my peers in that we all reported to the same vice president. Because I was new, I needed to learn about each of these business units, so I arranged with the GMs to visit each location and meet with the teams.

One of the GMs had previously held my position. In fact, I replaced him when I was promoted into the role. As a result, he really didn’t think he needed my help, nor did he have time to meet with me or return my calls, but he did arrange for me to meet with his staff, which I did. While I was there, I asked one of the staff members for a report, which she sent me. Well, for some reason that made the GM mad and he sent me a scathing letter telling me never to talk to his staff members without his knowledge again and he copied our boss on the letter.

I was a combination of afraid, upset, and angry. I was afraid that our boss would question his decision to hire me since I had apparently caused a problem just weeks into the assignment. I was upset that the GM reacted that way because I needed to have a positive working relationship with him. But I was mostly angry that he had been so non-responsive and placed obstacles in the way of me doing my job. I wanted to reply that he was the one who arranged for me to meet with his staff, so he certainly had knowledge that I was speaking with them. If he wanted me to talk to him, he should try returning my calls. But I didn’t. Instead, I prayed.

As a result of my prayer, I chose to treat him the way I wanted to be treated. That is, I directed my response to him alone and did not bring our boss into it. I apologized for innocently crossing a boundary and promised to respect his wishes and only contact him in the future. I also asked him to provide me the courtesy of picking up the phone and calling me if he had any issues to address. He didn’t need to bring our boss into this misunderstanding, and I hoped that we could resolve any issues that may occur between us in the future.

I wish I could say that the GM and I had a stellar relationship from then on, but that’s not what happened. He continued to be non-responsive to my requests and made it difficult for me to do my job. His behavior was choking productivity and being disruptive to growth. If I could get inside the GM’s mind, he might think otherwise. He might judge my need to learn about his business unit and requests for information to be the real obstacles to productivity and growth. Perhaps he was right. But our first reading says, “Those who are righteous must be kind.” (Wis 12:19), and his letter certainly wasn’t kind.

In an article in Psychology Today, the author writes “Our judgments interfere with many of our relationships. They give us a sense of righteousness, but sometimes all that is really happening is that we are not getting what we want from the other person or they are not doing what we think is best. In fact, judging someone is an easy path. It is much more challenging to be loving, accepting, and kind when the person in front of us is not acting the way we want them to.”

Patience and preaching of repentance

Judging someone is taking an easy path. The more difficult path points in our direction and what we must do, change, or become. A month ago, Bishop Barron published an article in response to the comments many people made about the statement from the bishops of California regarding the attacks on the statues of St. Junipero Serra in San Francisco, Ventura, and Los Angeles. Commentators said some version of this: “Well, bishop, making a statement is all fine and good, but what are you and the other bishops going to do about it?” Which prompted Bishop Barron to write the article titled, “Why ‘What are the bishops doing about it?’ is the wrong question.”

He said, “My purpose in this article is not to examine the specific issues surrounding Padre Serra but rather to respond to a number of remarks in the comboxes that point to what I think is a real failure to understand a key teaching of Vatican II.” Relying on the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium, Bishop Barron proceeded to explain the important teaching of the right relationship of the clergy and the laity in engaging the culture.

For some reason, a lot of self-professed Catholics were offended by the bishop’s article and they took to the comboxes posting what was described as “wave upon wave of the most hateful, vituperative, venomous words that you can imagine.” It took three people four days to remove the most poisonous comments. So as a spiritual father, Bishop Barron issued a pastoral “cry of the heart” in a video response to his fellow Catholics who practice this sort of thing. He said, “Cut it out!” He defined the behavior as “calumny,” or the mean-spirited accusation of another person.

Bishop Barron defended legitimate argument as morally good. Real argument fosters both truth and love. He said a legitimate argument “seeks to shed light on what is really the case—truth, and to invite others to see more clearly—a type of love.” Calumny, on the other hand, is a violation of both charity and justice and is rightly categorized as a mortal sin.

What I found most impressive about the bishop’s video response was that he wasn’t making the plea in defense of himself. He was more concerned for the lost souls, both the self-professed Catholics who participated in the online vitriol and those non-Catholic, religion-seeking, non-believers who stumbled upon his site and witnessed the hate-filled way Catholics responded to a bishop who had made an argument.

There is neither truth nor love in remarks that attack the person instead of their position. Beware, because as we’ve seen to an excess recently, it is easy to get sucked into mean-spirited, mob reactions, virtually and in person. While you may be right in your position, remember “Those who are righteous must be kind.” (Wis 12:19)

Mustard Seeds

In responding to evil in this world, we should look to the example of the “mustard seeds” of the last century, those whose faith represent the small beginnings of the kingdom and its marvelous expansion (Mt 13:32): St. Mother Teresa, St. Pope John Paul II, and St. Maria Goretti.

Mother Teresa was a simple nun, barely 5’0”, but her love grew into what we know as the Missionaries of Charity that now include 4,500 nuns working in more than 600 missions across 133 countries. St. Pope John Paul II, who as a young man lived under the oppression of Communism, met with the Communist leaders of Poland and changed the course of history. And, St. Maria Goretti was only 12 years old when she was attacked and mortally wounded by Alessandro Serenelli. Yet, on her deathbed, she expressed forgiveness for Alessandro and stated that she wanted to have him in Heaven with her. Less than 50 years later, some 500,000 people, most of them youth, came from around the world to attend her canonization in St. Peter’s Square.

And what about her attacker, Allesandro Serenelli? He was tried, convicted, and because he was not yet an adult, sentenced to 30-years in prison. He remained unrepentant for three years, until a local bishop visited him in jail. He told the bishop of a dream, “in which Maria gave him lilies, which burned immediately in his hands.” He reported seeing a vision of his victim in which she repeated to him how she had forgiven him on her death bed and from this point he was converted and became a model prisoner.

After his release from prison, Alessandro held various jobs before working as a receptionist and gardener at a monastery of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. He was accepted as a lay brother of the order and lived with them until he died at age 87. If he would have been 21 at the time of the crime, he could have been sentenced to death, unrepentant and without atoning for his sins. But it was not the judges’ job to condemn him. Only God could see that what looked like a weed, when fully grown would turn out to be wheat.

It is difficult to look at all the evil actions of someone like Alessandro Serenelli and others and not want to condemn them as evil people, but that job is above our pay grade. That job belongs to God alone. Instead of judging, we need to first look in the mirror and attend to our own faults. Then, when confronted by someone who does need patient and kind redirection, our example of truth and love may influence repentance on their part.

Let’s ask “the Spirit [who] comes to the aid of our weakness” (Rom 8:26) to guide us. Lord, train us to see others as you would see them. Help us use truth as a light to guide us, and grace as a hand to lead us. Help us to be patient with others who fail us. Forgive us for failing to show grace to our neighbor and for using truth as a club rather than a tool. Help us to refine these gifts you have given us and speak truth in love. Amen.

So, this week take personal responsibility for what is wrong, teach others with patience and love and God will bless you abundantly and you will glorify the Lord by your life.

If you liked this episode, spread the word. You know what to do, forward, share, or click to post. Also, check out the Resources page where you can find a link to the books and other resources mentioned in other episodes of By Your Life. I’m always interested in what you think, so give me some feedback by leaving a comment.