Spirituality Studies 11-1 Spring 2025 5 Patrick Laude 2.1 The Mote and the Beam One of the most meaningful occurrences of this spiritual predicament is the parable of the mote and the beam – or the speck and the plank – in Matthew 7:3–5. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. The context of this symbolic teaching is the earlier injunction not to judge: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1). The plain implication is that judging will result, or might result, in being judged, and indeed in being judged by one’s own judging. The Greek verb for “to judge” in the Gospel is Κρίνω (Gr. krinô), which denotes opinion, determination, and discernment. Positively, the discernment of spirits, alluded to in 1 Corinthians 12:8, is deemed to include an ability to assess the origin and nature of a phenomenon either through reflective examination or charismatic grace. Thus, it has been assessed that, according to Saint Paul, “genuine cognition takes place… [note: in it] through a symbiosis between the divine and human spirit” (Hense 2016, 10). By contrast, what is at stake in the mote and the beam is none other than what obstructs the flow of grace. It is also significant that the passage on the mote and the beam precedes the admonition not to give “which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast… pearls before swine” (Matthew 7:6). This warning evidently entails a need for discernment and an ability to perceive – metaphorically speaking – the beam in the eye of the “dogs” and “swine” from whom holy pearls must be kept. It is quite clear, therefore, that the passage on the mote and the beam cannot be interpreted, as has been confirmed by many ancient commentators, as a sweeping exclusion of all judgments in the name of a hasty and misleading understanding of charity. Hence, for instance, Saint John Chrysostom’s admonition that this passage must be read thoughtfully not to give rise to destructive delusions: “What then can the saying be? Let us carefully attend, lest the medicines of salvation, and the laws peace, be accounted by any man laws of overthrow and confusion.” (John Chrysostom 2012, 244). A careful consideration of the meaning of this parable, to which several Church Fathers invite us, leads one to observe that the Gospel spells out the conditions on which it is possible, and even necessary, to cast out the mote from the other’s eye. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus provides an insight into such purifying prerequisites in relation to the eye in Matthew 6:22–23: “Such are they [note: those whose eye are evil] who wash only the outside of the cup and platter, and do not understand that, unless the inside of these things is cleansed, the outside itself cannot be made pure” (Roberts 1886). In the same vein, John Chrysostom makes use of this distinction by drawing a contrast between a formal understanding of the Old Law and a spiritual consideration of the New dispensation [1]. What characterizes the formal understanding of the Law is poor self-knowledge because of a one-sided concentration on the external letter. Hence, the prerequisites we mentioned earlier involve a keen awareness of the beam in one’s eye, as a move beyond a purely legalistic understanding of the way. The second step amounts to fulfilling the spirit of the law, which is synthetized by the two commandments preached by Christ in Matthew 22:35–40: Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Highlighting the spirit of spiritual interiorization that the latter entails, one may point out the contrast between the verbs “to behold” – which implies “judging from the outside”, and “to consider” – which suggests looking at the heart. Indeed, the two Greek verbs βλέπω (Gr. blepô) and κατανοεω (Gr. katanoeô) – from the same root as noesis – mean respectively “to see” or “to look at”, and “to consider attentively”. It appears therefore that the main implication of the mote and the beam lies in a distinction between formal perception and internal self-knowledge [2]. It is only through the latter that a spiritual purification is possible. Further, why is the obstructing element in our eye larger than the one in the other’s eye? It is presumably because the perception of oneself is more difficult than that of others, or because there is more urgency or need for the restoring sight to one’s eye than to others’, precisely because the former is a precondition for the latter. For instance, Saint Caesareus of Arles, one of the most influential Church Fathers of the 6th century, illustrates this disproportion in terms of the relationship between the speck of anger and the plank of hatred: “There is a speck in his eye, a plank in yours, and how can an eye with a plank in it see the speck?
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