What is the right “scale”? How should I measure others?
Newsroom (05/21/2023 11:35am, Gaudium Press)”Strive to bear with patience the faults and weaknesses of others; others will also have much to bear from you.
If you cannot make yourself as you wish, how can you expect others to conform to your wishes? We easily want others not to have faults, but we don’t correct our own.
We want others to be strictly corrected, but we ourselves do not want to be reprimanded; we are unhappy that others have too much freedom, but we do not want to be denied what we ask for; we are pleased that others are subject to the statutes, but we do not tolerate the slightest prohibition. From this you can see how seldom we use the same scale for ourselves and for others.
If all were perfect, what would we suffer for love of God?
But God has so ordained that we should learn to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal 6:2); for everyone has his own burden; no one is without defects, no one is self-sufficient, no one is wise enough to lead himself; but we are to bear with and comfort one another; we are to give help, instruction, and counsel to one another. It is in adversity that one’s virtue is best manifested; the occasion does not make a man weak, it reveals him as he is.
THOMAS OF KEMPIS. Imitation of Christ. São Paulo: Cultor of Books, 2019, p.59.
