“Always interpret everything in the most favorable light”

Wise words for a Monday morning, from Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh.  It’s something we all need to hear these days:

We are called to live love, to reflect that Divine Love we remember in Divine Mercy Sunday. It is a love that calls us to mercy, and that calls us to charity which is Divine Love and Mercy lived.

Particularly during the Easter season, an armistice on the rush to judgment might be called. We have lived again in those last few days of the Lenten season the greatest rush to judgment in humanity’s history. An innocent Jesus is arrested, tried, beaten, paraded through the streets and brutally crucified. Humanity judges the Son of Man and rushes to his execution.

In warning about missing that beam in our own eye, Jesus warns us not to judge. He is not telling us to tolerate sin. But he is reminding us not to rush into judgment. He is telling us our lives are meant to be lived not in pointing fingers, but in charity that doesn’t ask before it serves, doesn’t lecture before it ministers, doesn’t judge before it heals.

Imagine if Jesus was so quick to judge as I seem to do, as we seem to do, far too often. What would He have said then to the 10 Apostles who ran away and hid rather than keep watch under his cross? Or to Peter who denied him not once, not twice, but three times? Or To Mary Magdalene who first did not recognize him as the Risen Savior? Or to the disciples on the road to Emmaus who failed to understand what had happened on that first Easter?

In the maxims of the Sisters of St. Joseph attributed to the order’s founder, Father Jean Pierre Medaille, he reminds his congregation in the Eucharist Letter to “always interpret everything in the most favorable light.”

It is a good maxim for all of us. Something we should all keep in mind as we go through our daily pilgrimage. I know that I will try to remember it.

Paul’s words always come back to us: “If I have all faith … but have not love, I am nothing.” Love is at the core of Christian belief because God is love. God asks us to love Him and love our neighbors. In the Eucharist we are given the grace to live out that love.

Read it all. It’s worth it.