St. Therese and judging others

By Rebecca Duncan

Photo credit: Wikipedia.

And it is the Lord, it is Jesus, Who is my judge. Therefore I will try always to think leniently of others, that He may judge me leniently, or rather not at all, since He says: "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”
― St. Thérèse de Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux

I would much rather not be judged when I die, like St. Therese.  I know Mother Teresa said that she never judged anyone because if you judge others it leaves no room to love them.

I suppose there are a lot of reasons that people can be judgmental.  Perhaps one reason is that we put a misplaced value on people, their behavior and their way of thinking.  Their ideas can be wrong and their behavior can be wrong, but that's never more important than the person themselves.

Correcting people's errors is a work of charity.  But if we correct without love then there is no good in it.  If we don't have love then nothing we do is worth anything. 

If the only thing we see when we are trying to correct someone is their error then we have a log in our eye that needs to be taken out first.


Rebecca blogs at  Otaku Catholic.