Reflection
Jesus uses the parables of the blind leading the blind and the log in one’s eye to warn his disciples against spiritually blind leaders who cause others to fall into a pit. And more directly, he strictly commands them to stop judging others when their own sins may be so much larger. In both examples,
Luke explicitly directs his words to the disciples. Jesus is warning his followers that they cannot effectively minister or correct others if they remain spiritually blind to their own shortcomings.
Jesus is casting a harsh light on hypocrisy. This certainly has been a traditional interpretation of Luke’s passage.
The concept of the “wounded healer” popularized by psychologist Carl Jung and theologian Henri Nouwen, however, may suggest a richer, more nuanced dimension of this passage, one that explores the frail human condition.
A wounded healer may be defined as a person who turns his or her own painful wound into a deep capacity to help and heal others. Instead of letting hardships and suffering make them bitter, they, with God’s grace, transform them into wisdom and strength.
Only those who have suffered the traumas of alcoholism and later recovered and continue to recover from the addiction can truly understand and help other alcoholics.
Jesus does not say, ‘ignore the speck in your neighbor’s eye forever.” Instead, he says, “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck.”
The process of removing one’s own “log” is painful, requiring brutal honesty, and self-awareness. It requires intense vulnerability. Once a person has faced the agony of their own woundedness, their brokenness, and experienced the healing grace of God, then their approach to another person’s speck – their wound – changes completely. They no longer approach the other judgmentally or with smug superiority. Instead, grounded in one’s own woundedness, and mentor-like, they help the other with a gentle, empathetic hand.
The traditional sign on the cross on which Jesus was crucified reads, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” It might just as accurately have read, “The Wounded Healer.”
Similarly, the good news in today’s Gospel for us may have less to do with punitive moralism than with the Christ-like mutual healing we are called to offer one another, we, the wounded healers.
