Tag Archives: judgement

Judge Not? Humble Access

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Medieval angel holding scales of justice, illustrating Libra, the constellation of scales in the zodiac.


Judge not, lest you be judged. You will be judged by the same standards that you use to judge other people. The measure you use will be used to measure you. (Matt. 7)

Does Jesus mean, “Don’t hold anyone accountable?” Does he mean, “Don’t have any standards?” Does he mean, “Let people get away with everything?” Of course not!

St. Joseph, the foster father of Jesus and the righteous man betrothed to the Mother of God, was prudent. He took his family to Egypt to escape the murderous intent of King Herod when Jesus was 2 years old and he brought his family back to Israel when King Herod died but he didn’t just go back to the village they had lived in before. He took them to live somewhere else because Herod’s son–who was worse than his father!–was ruling over their old hometown. St. Joseph certainly used his judgement, his common sense, and prudence to decide what to do in each situation. He did not bury his head in the sand and pretend to not see what was as plain as day for the safety of his family.

Jesus is not telling us to hold no one accountable. He’s telling us to hold ourselves accountable to the same standards we use to hold everyone else accountable. Maybe I have every excuse in the book to explain why I am late–the subway went out of service, it was pouring rain, there were no taxis, the bus got stuck in traffic–but then I get furious when someone else is late and makes me wait. Maybe I want to through someone in proverbial jail when they do something that I allow myself to do all the time. Maybe I am always the victim. Maybe it’s never my fault. Is that realistic? Is that honest?

Being honest is not about masochism and beating ourselves up for things we think we can’t help. It’s a simple statement of fact, like the opening lines of the Prayer of Humble Access:

We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness but in thy manifold and great mercy. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs from under thy table ….

This is not masochistic wallowing in guilt; it is a simple statement of fact.

Jesus is telling us to be humane. He’s telling us to be human. He’s telling us to be honest and admit that we fall short of our own standards and can’t expect other people to live up to standards or follow rules that we can’t–or simply choose not to–follow. He’s underscoring the importance of holding ourselves accountable the same way we want to hold everyone else accountable: “Our Father …. forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

From the writing of Dorothy Day

Unpaid Wages Cry to Heaven

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Cain kills Abel in the 12th-13th century Byzantine style mosaics of the cathedral in Monreale (Sicily).

Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth-eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you; it will devour your flesh like fire. Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. (James 5:1-4)

Do these words sound familiar? So much early Christian preaching, so many of the Church Fathers, say the same thing in a variety of ways: the money and possessions of the rich have been stolen from the poor and should be returned to their rightful owners. The unpaid wages owed the workers cries to heaven as the blood of Abel cried out to God, demanding justice against his brother-killer Cain. By not paying their workers, the rich do as great an injustice to them as Cain perpetrated against his brother. Economic injustice is as great a crime as murder.

The stolen wealth of the rich will rot away and testify against them on Judgement Day, the epistle tells us. The fine clothes the rich wrap around themselves are already rotten shrouds falling away from the walking corpses of the rich.

Christian care for the poor was fundamental to the life of a Christian community. Julian the Apostate, the emperor who tried to revive pagan worship after the legalization of Christianity, famously complained, “… the impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well; all men see that our people [pagans] lack aid from us.” Christians cared for everyone, whatever their beliefs. Anyone in need was one of the least of Christ’s brethren and deserved the care of Christ’s Body, the Church.

Too many modern people do not realize how rich they are compared to the rest of the world. Too many modern people do not appreciate what they have stolen from the poor who are both next door and on the other side of the earth. I’m afraid that many people would repeat Julian’s complaint that the Christians put everyone else to shame in terms of caring for the poor. On Judgement Day, that will probably be the greatest indictment against contemporary Christians.

Read more about the blood of Abel crying out to heaven here. Read Takanori Inoue’s work on The Early Church’s Approach to the Poor in Society and Its Significance to the Church’s Social Engagement Today online here.

Fallen is Babylon the Great

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“A mighty angel lifted up a stone like a great millstone and hurled it into the sea, saying, “Thus will Babylon, the great city, be hurled down with violence, never to be seen again” (Apoc. 18:21). Images of the angel and the millstone from the Val-Dieu Apocalypse (left; from Normandy during the 1320’s and is part of a group of four manuscripts from northern France that were modelled artistically on a now-lost 13th century English manuscript) and the Las Huelgas Apocalypse (right; the Las Huelgas Apocalypse is the largest and latest [1220] of a five-hundred-year series of medieval illuminated commentaries on the Apocalypse by the monk Beatus of Liébana. The series is considered Spain’s most important contribution to medieval manuscript illumination).

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean and loathsome bird. For all the nations of the world have drunk the wine of her fornication…. ” (Apoc. 18:2)

The whore of Babylon is overthrown and the seer of the Apocalypse sings a series of dirges over the fallen city–both Babylon and Rome, capitals of the fallen world’s opposition to the Kingdom of God. The ruins have become the home of vile and loathsome monsters–some natural, some unnatural–as kings and sailors and merchants and those who grew wealthy from the imperial exploitation of the world mourn their losses.

It is easy–perhaps, too easy–to see the fall of Babylon-Rome as the condemnation of all economic systems that depend on the exploitation of the natural world or the labor of others. Certainly the “mark of the beast” and the refusal to let those who will not worship the Beast to participate in the economic life of society reinforces this interpretation. The Apocalypse seer insists–in many ways throughout the text–that Christians must segregate themselves from the larger society; he does not see how the Church and the fallen world can co-exist or cooperate in any way. He only sees persecution and conflict between the two, much as Augustine describes the “two cities” struggling against each other throughout human history in his classic City of God.

Another way to read the fall of Babylon is to see the city’s destruction as the overthrow of all false teaching, which is at the root of all exploitative systems. It is the misunderstanding of God’s relationship with the world, the human race and our misunderstanding of our relationship with each other that gives rise to all subsequent exploitation.

The fall of Babylon the great is the overthrow of Arius, Nestorius, and all the heresies that the Church has struggled against in the past and will continue to struggle against until the End of Days.