The St. John, called the ‘Golden Tongue,’ (Chrysostom) for his brilliant preaching, was a Greek Bishop who lived in the 4th Century.  He is especially recognized for his call to his fellow bishops to be more faithful to the Gospel and the Gospel life style that Jesus witnessed for his followers.  Too often Bishops in John’s world were men who sought power and control, illustrating Jesus’ description of the blind leading the blind – where both fall into a pit that they cannot see.

Jesus specifically challenges those who serve in His name to remove the wooden beam from their own eyes before they counsel other to remove splinters from their eyes. Each of us is called to ask if we have a beam (a board) in our eye that is blinding us to behavior that is contrary to the Gospel and alienates us from Christ and others from the Church.  Leaders especially have to ask this question and pray for the beam to be removed. 

Recently I became acutely aware of the consequences of the blind leading the blind.  My older brother died after a brief illness and I traveled to his funeral celebration several states away from my home.  Because my brother was a deacon the bishop of his diocese came to preside at the funeral Mass.  The bishop of generous and kind, very easy to admire and to follow.  He was clearly a man of deep prayer and when he invited us to prayer I was struck by how blessed his diocese is to have such a leader healing the various splinters to be found in my own eye. 

While visiting with a younger brother I heard of his heart break that his parish had been torn apart by the decision of his bishop to replace a caring pastor with a young man only recently ordained, who had not had the opportunity to pray for the capacity to see as Jesus sees.  The Bishop and his priest were jealous of the love the older pastor had stimulated in his parishioners, and removed him to a smaller and poorer parish (where he flourished, by the way) and the new priest demanded that only men could serve in the various ministers, that no divorced parents could enroll their children in the parish school, and various other short sited decisions.  The population of the parish dropped precipitously and some left the Church altogether.  I discovered that this tragedy of tearing a community apart was not uncommon in this diocese – a remarkable example of a blind bishop not unlike the men that St. John Chrysostom, following  Jesus’ teaching, challenged.
I was deeply aware that they are various forms of death: death of a faithful servant of the poor, death of a beloved brother, death of a community, and death of faith due to blind leadership – the last caused by falling into a “pit” as described by Jesus in this Gospel.

Today is a good day to go to the ultimate eye doctor, Jesus, and beg him to send his Spirit of healing and compassion to open by eyes to see my own sin, before I challenge the apparent sin (by my judgement) of another. 

St. Paul tells us to give the Gospel freely to others after we have run the race of the Gospel ourselves.  Let’s ask St. John to pray with and for us to see and run faithfully, so that others may see and win their races by following our example of love.

“The Lord withholds no good thing from those who walk in sincerity.”