NOTES for Mat 7:1-8

Today’s Gospel reading gives, in essence, a brief account of the Christian vision of the ideal ordering of “society.” Of course, many details are absent, but that is not important. It shows how relations between people in this society should be arranged, on the one hand, and, on the other, that above all people there is something—or, more precisely, Someone—greater than they are. The famous image of the speck, the log, and the eyes directly points to the presence of Someone who can see every person’s eyes and knows what is in them, Someone who has no logs of His own. This is precisely why our relationships are formed by Him and through Him. The Christian community—the Church—is built in exactly this way: it consists of people gathered around the Head of the Church, Christ. Every person relates in some way to the Lord and, through this, becomes “joined” into one Body with others. Clearly, every body must live according to the laws of “harmony” if it is to function normally. And, as Paul would later write about this in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 12), the Body of Christ also lives in concord. The law by which it exists is love. These are relationships of mutual completion and service. It is sacrificial love, the love that gives oneself to others and for others. These are relationships in which we, people who receive something from God (see Matt. 7:7–8), try not to keep these gifts for ourselves alone, but to share them with our brothers and sisters.