Homily: Monday - 12th Week of OT 2016 - Stop Judging

I came across a quote by the Evangelical Christian preacher Rick Warren recently.  He said,  “Our culture has accepted two huge lies.  The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense.”

As Christians, particularly in the United States, but similarly around the world, we live in the midst of people with tremendously different lifestyles and beliefs than we. Not only people of different faiths or no faith, but even some whose moral choices are clearly contrary to both the moral law and also the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We live in enemy occupied territory. 

Christians are labeled as politically incorrect or intolerant for preaching the Gospel. Priests and Bishops are even sometimes condemned by their own parishioners for teaching what is in the Catechism.  I’ve been labeled as “judgmental” for teaching that Christians are supposed to follow the 10 commandments.  It’s an insane age. 

But, when Jesus teaches us “don’t judge” he doesn’t mean that we have to throw out our Christians convictions when we are dealing with people who disagree with us. 

The judging Our Lord condemns is when we treat someone as inhuman, not worth saving, not worth our charity.  When Jesus dined with prostitutes, tax collectors, and Pharisees, he neither hated them nor feared them, nor did he simply confirm them in their sin.  He called them to something higher, to repentance, to transformation, to Gospel living.  Calling them, calling us, out of sin, out of slavery, was his act of love.  The woman caught in adultery, he said, “go and sin no more”.  He didn’t tell her that adultery was okay, nor did he treat her as subhuman, beyond forgiveness. 

While it is considered a sin in our culture to preach truths contrary to the Gospel of Political Correctness, we are called by God to preach the unchanging Gospel of Christ even when we might be labeled politically incorrect or intolerant or judgmental.  At the same time, we are to reach out in love, patience, and generosity, to those who disagree with us, even to those who have hurt us in the past, to engage them in conversation and gently lead them to Christ.

May the Holy Spirit always aid us in exhibiting Christian charity toward all, our brother, our enemy, our persecutor, for we have been called to bring the Gospel to every corner of the world, and to every heart, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.