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Mary, Queen of Vocations, pray for us!
JMJ +m
When Jesus tells us not to judge nor to condemn, he is instructing us to never attach evil to a person. He is asking us rather to separate sin from the sinner. This is how God shows mercy to us, by separating our sins from our person completely. As far as the east is from the west, so far does God remove our sins (Ps 103:12). This is how we are to forgive one another. We are to detach the sinner from the sin, so that no matter what sin a person has committed, even if he be considered our enemy, we are to love Him just the same.
This, of course, is impossible to do unless it is God Himself who is showing His love through us. It is more natural for us to attach a sin more closely to the sinner, and easier for us to judge the person than the sin. The simple solution to someone who annoys us or sins against us or who dislikes us or who rivals us or who disagrees with us is to judge that person's sin and to attach that sin to the person in a definitive away. Our first reaction is to lock that person up and to throw away the key, rather than to distrust our initial judgment of the person.
Jesus points out our tendency to judge as an act of fear and useless self-preservation. His antidote? Jesus asks us to give. In fact, the Gospel intimates that those who are busy giving do not have time to judge. If the greatest gift we have received is the Lord's mercy, a gift of love that begins loving us where we hate ourselves, then this is the first gift we should want to give to others. We are to give to others not our first impressions of them, but our story of being set free by a merciful love that never changes despite our sins. May we be more eager to forgive, and to measure others generously, that we might be measured generously in return.
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