I Closed My Eyes So I Wouldn’t Judge You

This Gospel reading is pretty gross. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off? Yuck. Also, it’s pretty violent. I do think that the grossness and the violence can cause an emotional response that clouds what is really being taught here.

It does drive me a little crazy when I hear, “Well, Jesus was just talking in hyperbole — he didn’t mean what he was saying here.” Okay, it’s true that we shouldn’t harm ourselves. Please don’t ever do that.

The big word in this Gospel reading is “if.” If our eyes cause us to sin, then pluck them out. But our eyes don’t have a mind of their own. If there is sin, it comes from our heart. If you are a sinner with eyes, then you’ll be a sinner without eyes too.

It is certainly not good to harm our bodies as Jesus is talking about here, but Jesus is saying that as bad as it is to harm our body, it is worse to harm our soul through sin. The Gospel is emphasizing the importance that we refrain from sin. Our bodies last us a lifetime, but our soul is with us for eternity.

I was thinking about this recently at a Mass where the confession penitential rite was used. It is that rite that starts with “I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters.” I noticed that I have a habit of closing my eyes every time we do this. As soon as we say, “I confess,” I close my eyes.

I remember when this habit started. It was right when we went to the updated liturgy back in 2011. The first time we did this, I saw that someone wasn’t striking their breast at the right time. Then I feared that I would think negatively about them, and I didn’t like having that in my head. The problem was that I was judging them. But the whole point of the penitential rite is to think about my sins and my errors. I had decided to always close my eyes when we do the penitential rite to avoid this judgment.

While closing my eyes might seem like it was fixing my judgmental errors, the real problem was still there. If it is in my nature to judge other people, I can easily do that if I’m blind. The truth is that my eyes did not cause the sin. The problem resided in my heart. Today, I don’t seem to have this same issue, which might be why it’s easy to discuss. I think that the graces provided by the sacrament of reconciliation are why I’ve changed in this particular regard.

In Mark chapter 9, in the story of the millstone and the salt, the reading starts by saying that people who give you water because you belong to Christ will be rewarded. Then it says that teaching children to sin is very bad — something about a millstone tied to a person’s neck and deep water. Then we get the eye-plucking advice. And finally it ends with something that reflects back on the whole reading. It tells us to keep good salt in ourselves and advises us to prevent the salt from going bad.

Good salt imparts flavor and it preserves. Bad salt, if it gets corrupted somehow, doesn’t do any of this. Rather, it would take on whatever flavor it is mixed with. Good salt impacts. Bad salt is impacted.

When I made the choice all those years ago to just close my eyes rather than focus on the real problem, it put up an unnecessary wall between me and my community. It’s called communion for a reason. It is about coming together. I’m not saying that closing your eyes is bad. It was bad for me because it was about creating a separation. This part of me was bad salt, and so I took on this flavor of judging others. By God’s grace, that bad salt has been at least partially flushed out. We can do many things to participate with God’s grace, especially given the many gifts we get from his Church.

Giving to others — water, food, shelter, clothing — that’s the good salt that impacts. Teaching children about God, the sanctity of life, and being an example to them that they will want to follow — that’s the good salt that impacts. Going to reconciliation — that’s a great place to flush out the bad salt. Receiving the Eucharist is another great way to receive the good salt that impacts.

We all have the opportunity to receive this good salt through the sacraments. We all have the opportunity to impact our community through the sharing of this good salt.

If you built a polite system so you would not have to see the people you judge, start by naming the system. I closed my eyes at the confession so I would not see them miss the gesture. That was not humility. That was a workaround. Write the actual sentence you were avoiding. I was judging them. The eyes were not the cause.

Do not cut anything off. Jesus is not giving a method for harming the body. The “if” in this Gospel is the point. The eye does not decide. The heart does. If the judgment is still there with your eyes closed, the workaround did not fix it. Take the judgment to reconciliation, in the plain words, not in a speech about how other people do the rite wrong.

Then do one small thing that puts you back in the room. Open your eyes for the confession. Or stay after and speak to the person you had been scoring. Not a correction of their gesture. One ordinary sentence. The wall, in this homily, was the separation I built so I would not have to deal with what was in me. Good salt impacts the people in front of you. Bad salt only takes on the flavor of the room you are trying not to see.

This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.

Drawn from a homily first preached in 2017.