Reflection on Mt 7:12
“Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
These words remind us of a very important rule for our personal life, for our relationships with those closest to us as well as for our relationships with other people. We usually want others to do something and we are sad when they do not do what we would like them to do or we reproach them for it. Or we even make a gloomy face because they are unable to guess our wishes. This is the picture of the old self. We should learn our lessons from this unsound thinking, and learn true self-criticism instead. We have to assume that the other person is just as unsound in his thinking. If our thinking was vertical, in other words if we sought first the kingdom of God and the salvation of our soul and communicated with God in prayer, we would also seek the kingdom of God within us first and prefer it to temporal and passing values such as human glory, recognition, excessive wealth, vanities, etc. All these things prevent us from launching out into the depths of our heart, and they build certain layers in our soul that affect our mind and our will. They unite us to the spirit of the world and to the spirit of lies and death without us realizing it.
To penetrate into the dark labyrinth of our soul we need the light of knowledge. God gives us this knowledge depending on how hard we strive to be faithful in prayer and in keeping His commandments. We are not to philosophize about God’s commandments, but to put them into practice. It is through prayer and keeping God’s commandments that we receive divine light. The first and greatest commandment is to love God. It means in the first place to set aside time for Him, in other words to find time for prayer, for communication with Him, a living communication. It is particularly necessary to talk in spirit to Christ crucified, to look upon His face and His wounds, from which His blood flows for the forgiveness of our sins. His cross is the means by which we put off the old self to put on the new one.
The second commandment is to love our neighbour as ourselves. Here Jesus gives us specific instructions on how to love our neighbour. It is not about a display of emotion, but rather about perceiving the dignity of our neighbour whose nature – spirit – is immortal as he was created in the image of God. Jesus died for him too. But he also has the old self, the same as me, which keeps both of us in the dark. This darkness is associated with egocentrism, or human pride. Pride hates the truth, especially when we tell him about his mistake. But the same is true about us. When someone tells us about our mistake, we do not accept it either, or we feel sad or offended. The saints rejoiced when someone humbled them, because they knew that the layer of darkness was thus pierced by the laser of God’s light, which brings knowledge and leads us into spiritual mysteries intrinsically related to our temporal and eternal life. This purification is based on a certain principle of justice: Use the same measure for both you and your neighbour. But we do not respect it. Jesus encourages us to learn it. This path is connected with pure love for our neighbour, which means that we desire his good as we desire our own good, the ultimate good, namely the salvation of soul. This is the true meaning of God’s commandment about loving our neighbour as ourselves. To fulfil it, Jesus calls us to learn to change our thinking according to the principle He gives us in this Bible verse. We should do to others what we want them to do to us. So we should start first, and not wait for the other person to do it. The word first is very important. Jesus also emphasizes it when telling us to remove the plank from our own eye. He says: “First remove the plank from your own eye, and then…” So it requires, on our part, an effort in taking the first steps, becoming spiritual pioneers. By doing it for the sake of others we are actually doing it for our own sake. This is also true love for ourselves, free of egoism, since it seeks the spiritual good of others as well as our own, namely salvation.
What we want others to do to us, let us do to them first. If we want them to be patient with us, let us be patient with them first. If we want them to help us, let us help them first. If we want them to treat us with compassion, let us have compassion for them in their suffering first. Let us not expect recognition or reward right away. God Himself will reward us by giving us special light, wisdom and peace. Moreover, if we are not recognized, we can more easily understand the suffering and abandonment of Jesus, who is forgotten by us and by many others, although He loves us the most and has done His utmost for us. He wants the best for us. Here we come to understand so-called black ingratitude, which we ourselves show to Jesus without even being aware of it, and which we often show to our closest ones as well. Until we experience it ourselves, we are unable to perceive that we behave in this way towards Jesus, and then we will also understand that we behave so towards others as well. We are consumed with our own problems and do not see problems of others. We all walk the journey of life together and yet often members of family live like complete strangers to each other.
“Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them,” is truly a golden rule to be implemented throughout our life. Let us practise it daily, let us daily give an account before God. Our neighbour who somehow grieves us is given us at a certain stage of our life to help purify our soul. He grieves us by his ungratefulness, insults us or criticizes us, or even spreads slander and gossip about us, though he often does not mean to harm us at all. When we find out what was said about us in our absence, perhaps even with a slight exaggeration, we feel deeply hurt. But we do the same to others, though our hurt feelings make us blind to it. We need to be aware of it and be careful about what we say. A certain writer invited his friends to dine with him. One of the chairs at the table remained empty. On the back of the chair were the words, “The Absent are Present”. Whenever they talked about someone who was not present, they did so as if he was present.
Saint Basil mentions only two exceptions when it is necessary to tell an unpleasant truth about an absent person without it being defamatory:
1) When there is a danger that evil would be regarded as good. For example, a deceiver smiles and no one suspects him. But whoever knows his true intention is obliged to reveal the truth.
2) When this unpleasant truth is spoken with the intention of correcting the sinner. In that case especially those who have authority and responsibility are obliged not to conceal the faults of others (subordinates), but to bring them into the light and look for a way to correct them.
We often forget about Jesus in our relationships. Let us ask ourselves: Where is Jesus in our relationships and where is Jesus in our personal lives? Where is Jesus in our thoughts, in our plans or in our fear? If our relationship to Jesus was our motivation, we would not find it difficult to humble ourselves before others. Self-humiliation is the most effective way to be rid of darkness in which our old self – our ego – holds us enslaved. It is like a prison holding Jesus, who is like a slave in our soul. He is thirsty and hungry in our soul, desiring our salvation. He is thirsty in us just as He was on the cross when He cried out, “I thirst!” He thirsts for us to achieve salvation. We are mostly indifferent to salvation, while we prefer all kinds of vanity. This foolishness is proof of the darkness of original sin in us. We waste our life rather than make good use of it. We fail to do works worthy of eternity. That is why God sometimes has to allow suffering to make us stop and think where we are going, whether we follow the path of salvation or the path of indifference and the path of the world leading to destruction.
The second greatest commandment is “to love our neighbour as ourselves”. To be able to fulfil this commandment, we need a vital prayer routine. In prayer, we can give our pain to Jesus crucified and draw strength from Him for further struggle. In prayer, we receive the light we need. There are two areas in which we need to take concrete steps every day. Firstly, we need to talk to Jesus in interior prayer, especially at the time of our prayer watch or during the Holy Hour. Secondly, we need to learn to apply the right and Christian principles in our relationships. We need to learn it daily, train ourselves daily, humble our ego daily. How many times it is like our spiritual martyrdom. We shall receive light and strength in return. How much cynicism and ungratefulness we see today among people who are influenced by the spirit of the world, especially through smartphones and TV or other programmes, which purposefully instil selfishness in them. Let us therefore do the opposite, starting with interior prayer and then during the day treating others according to Christ’s principle: “Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
Download: Reflection on Mt 7:12
