Meditation Of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa : VIII Sunday of Ordinary Time C

This Meditation is shared from the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Below you can find the Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, for the VIII Sunday of Ordinary Time C, Sunday 2 March 2025.

Lk 6, 39-42

In his "Sermon on the Plain," the evangelist Luke includes these words of Jesus about blind leaders (Lk 6:39-42), which Matthew places in a different section of his Gospel rather than in the parallel Sermon on the Mount. 

Let us try to retrace Jesus' discourse. 

At the beginning he lays out the beatitudes (Lk 6:20-25), that is, the proclamation of a new world, where there are no longer those who dominate and those who suffer, those who command and those who submit; there are no longer those who are first and those who are last. It is the proclamation of a world where the traditional categories that divide the world in two, where some are considered great, and others small - disappear.  

The discourse continues by announcing a new way of relating to one another, which can only be rooted in mutual love, forgiveness, and mercy: "Love your enemies... Be merciful... Do not judge..." (Lk 6:27-38). Only love has the power to eliminate distinctions, placing everyone on the same level: every person is equally worthy of love and respect. 

Today's passage continues in this direction, and poses a concrete example of what Jesus has said so far. 

In fact, one way to place oneself above others, and to confirm the categories that divide people into two separate worlds, is by dividing the world into righteous and sinners, into people who are right and people who are wrong. 

Jesus tells a parable ("And he told them a parable, “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?" - Lk 6:39) in which we see a blind man offering to guide another blind man. There are two people, united by the same problem: they are blind.  

One, however, does not recognize his own problem, and distinguishes himself from the other, puts himself somewhat above, and decides to act as a guide, a chaperone, while he himself would need to be guided. 

Such is the state of the one who arrogates to himself the right to correct others, to point out to the other his faults: he places himself on the side of the one who is not at fault, and divides the world in two. He places himself above the other. 

That each of us may be a light for our brother and sister in need, but only on one condition: to recognize our shared human limits and acknowledge that we, too, are equally in need of salvation. 

This is because only those who have first experienced the Father's mercy can truly love others without presumption or self-sufficiency, in truth. Only those who have felt the pain of their own sin will have the compassion and tenderness to refrain from judging and from enclosing their brothers and sisters in the category of the mistaken and lost.  

A new world, where we overcome distinctions and barriers and live as brothers and sisters, requires a new outlook and new words. 

This is exactly what Jesus says at the end of today's passage: words overflow from within, from the heart, expressing the inner world we cultivate within (" How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’...  Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye” - Lk 6:42). 

A good heart is not a heart that does not err, but, on the contrary, it is a heart that accepts to be continually saved, that always starts again to build the world of the beatitudes, where one resists the temptation of seeing oneself as different and better. 

Finally, today's good news in this regard lies in v. 40, where Jesus says that ‘everyone’ who is well prepared can be a guide and light for others: “No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher”. 

‘Every’ is already a word that goes beyond categories, distinctions and discriminations: the possibility of being light is given to everyone. It is only a matter of being ‘well prepared’, which does not mean having learned something like one learns a lesson at school. He is well prepared who agrees to remain a disciple (Lk 6:40): only thus, by remaining a disciple, does one become a teacher.  

He who remains a disciple is like a man who, building his house, has dug very deep and laid its foundation, on the rock (Lk 6:48). 

+His Beatitude Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem

This Meditation was originally published on the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.