Eighth Sunday in ordinary time, Cycle C. Today’s readings: Sirach 27:4-7; 1 Corinthians 15:54-58; Luke 6:39-45

Today’s liturgy is especially fitting for carnival weekend. Though the timing is purely coincidental, the central message of our readings is a call to authenticity: overcoming hypocrisy, removing masks, and embracing true discipleship.

While the word ‘hypocrite’ originally meant ‘actor’ in Greek, it gradually took on a negative connotation. Jesus himself would frequently use it to denounce those who outwardly presented themselves as holy and deserving of admiration while harshly judging others, yet secretly harboured even worse attitudes and failings within their own hearts and lives.

Such characters abound, in real life as in literature. One striking example is Archdeacon Frollo from Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). Disney’s 1996 animated adaptation reimagined him as a judge, perhaps to avoid ruffling religious feathers, yet preserved his bigoted and self-righteous nature. A line from one of the songs in the film perfectly captures the tragic incongruity of every hypocrite: “Judge Claude Frollo longed to purge the world of vice and sin; and he saw corruption everywhere except within.”

To such people, Jesus poses a provocative question laced with dark humour: “Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the splinter that is in your eye’, when you cannot see the plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take out the splinter that is in your brother’s eye.”

Today’s readings challenge us to first examine our motives through self-reflection, thereby removing the metaphorical plank from our eyes and ensuring that our words and actions stem from a pure heart

The exquisite irony in all this is that most of us will hear these words and instinctively assume they apply to someone else, not to ourselves. On matters both great and small, we all exhibit Frollo-like tendencies, convinced that we could do a better job than those entrusted with responsibility; whether in running the country (or the Church), passing judgment in court, enforcing laws, or even refereeing football matches.

The list goes on. And yet, when our attention is drawn to our own failings, we become extremely defensive, imputing negative or even hateful motives to our interlocutors. We all want to be given the benefit of the doubt while rarely extending it to others.

A Time to Build, by Yuval Levin

Though present throughout all of history, these human failings have sadly been exacerbated in recent years. In his book A Time to Build (2020), Yuval Levin states that the social media are undermining our social lives: “They plainly encourage the vices most dangerous to a free society. They drive us to speak without listening, to approach others confrontationally rather than graciously, to spread conspiracies and rumours, to dismiss and ignore what we would rather not hear, to make the private public, to oversimplify a complex world, to react to one another much too quickly and curtly. They eat away at our capacity for patient toleration, our decorum, our forbearance, our restraint.”

This does not mean there are not objectively immoral situations in society – and in the Church, for that matter – that should be called out, corrected, and atoned for. This too is demanded by genuine discipleship. In fact, the Catechism declares that “It is the duty of citizens to contribute along with the civil authorities to the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom.”(CCC 2239)

Yet today’s readings challenge us to first examine our motives through self-reflection, thereby removing the metaphorical plank from our eyes and ensuring that our words and actions stem from a pure heart. They call us to discern and confront evil both within ourselves and in the world around us; to not merely engage in virtue signalling, but to actually seek to be virtuous.

bgatt@maltachurchtribunals.org