God knows no favorites, Sirach tells us. He judges justly and affirms the right. Is that true for you?

My mother used to point to a man in church whom she’d known since they were both children. “He was such a pious boy,” my mother always said approvingly. “He’d be in that same third pew each morning earlier than any of us, and he’d stay later.

He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man.

I am embarrassed to say that I have on too many occasions made a judgment about someone, only to learn later how very wrong I was. I actually think I block most of those memories, so ashamed am I. But one such moment comes to mind.

A spiritual director ruined one of my favorite pastimes—judging others and putting them down. I didn’t want to acknowledge that’s what I was doing. I preferred to call it small talk or dishing the dirt.

The critic who lives in my brain gives me very little peace. She sits in constant judgment of the people and situations I encounter each day.

Our God is a God of justice and mercy. We ask God for that mercy.

Judging others make us blind, whereas love is illuminating.  By judging others we blind ourselves . . . to the grace which others are just as entitled to as are we.