Homily: 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time

March 2, 2025

My dear brothers and sisters, both the gospel and the first reading of today present us with this need for introspection, that is looking into oneself too as we relate to others. In life most times our eyes are always as bright as floodlights in observing and recording the faults of others, the faults of our partner, the faults of our neighbors, the faults of our colleagues, the faults of our boss, the faults of our mother-in-law or daughter-in-law etc, but we do not see the dark spots in our own lives that need attention too. Usually, we want every other person to be a saint, but we are not worried if we are the demon. Our Lord Jesus Christ advises us in the gospel reading of today in a little humorous way, “why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log of wood in your own eye?”

The point of Jesus’ teaching is not that we are not meant to correct or guide the other, rather it means more that our correction or guidance will make better and deeper meaning if our words reflect the life that we live. Pope Paul VI in 1975 in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi no.41 wrote that “modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” So, fine words will never take the place of fine deeds. Words of correction that negate the lifestyle of the corrector may indeed be meaningless. One graduate student once courageously told his teacher, “I cannot hear what you say for simply listening to what you are.”

There was this couple who had a quarrel. The wife afterwards decided that she had to stop talking to her husband. So, when the husband came back from his work, the wife never talked to him as she used to do, she dropped his food for him on the dining table and retired to her bed in the bedroom. However, the woman remembered she had an early flight the next morning and she is a heavy sleeper, it was her husband who usually woke her up. The difficult situation became how to tell her husband, whom she is not in talking terms with, to wake her up by 5 am the next morning so that she could catch her flight. She decided to put it in writing, ‘Husband, wake me up by 5 am’ and left it for him on his bed. The man, when he went to his bed, saw the letter, read it and went to sleep. Before 5 am, the husband took a pen and wrote for her, ‘Dear wife, it is 5 am, get up’ and left it for her beside her pillow. The wife slept soundly till about 7:30 am and missed the flight. When she woke up, she was furious and was shouting at her husband for not waking her up. The husband told her, “My dear, be calm and go back to your bed and read your wake-up letter from me the same way I read my request letter from you last night.”

The open-ended question is who made the lady miss her flight, her husband or herself? The point of the story is that the goodness I desire and expect from the other person has to begin with myself. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi of India, “be the change you wish to see in the world.” It is the fact of life that the color of light is determined by the color of the environment, a white light in a green environment turns into a green light, a clean water in a dirty cup turns into a dirty water. A heart filled with evil will see only evil where every other person sees good, while a good heart may be the disinfectant that will kill all the evil germs and viruses in the society, that’s why Jesus says in the gospel reading of today, ex abundantia cordis os loquitor.

In essence, we have much work to do beginning with our own hearts. Jesus tells us in today’s gospel, a good tree produces good fruit. For a tree to produce a good fruit, it has to be planted in a fertile soil, it has to be manured, it has to be watered, it has to be pruned. Similarly for our hearts to produce good fruits, we have to fertilize and manure it with rich spiritual and inspirational resources, we have to water it with the word of God and the Sacraments, we have to prune off bad habits and bad lifestyles. We cannot produce good fruits by going to Canadian tire to buy a pair of binoculars with which we observe and record other’s faults, instead our good life may be the shocker that will touch and change others for good.