St. Paul picks up a theme from the preaching of Jesus and reminds us to stop judging. He adds an additional nuance: I do not even pass judgment on myself. As we can all testify, while we might have good intentions, our motives can be mixed up, even to ourselves. That is why we leave the judging to God. The Lord will manifest the motives of our hearts. One concrete spiritual practice we might adopt to help us to stop judging is to shift from an examination of conscience to an examination of consciousness. Instead of beating ourselves up for our faults and failings, let’s grow in awareness that God is with us throughout the day, inspiring love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, faith and modesty.
