Once again Jesus went out along the sea. All the crowd came to him and he taught them. As he passed by, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the customs post. He said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners sat with Jesus and his disciples; for there were many who followed him. Some scribes who were Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors and said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" Jesus heard this and said to them, "Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners."

During the final session of the movie “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” it becomes clear to Harry just who the prisoner of Azkaban, Sirius Black, really was. Throughout the whole movie, Harry and his friends Hermione and Ron had thought that Sirius had killed Harry’s father and mother. Totally preoccupied with that thought, Harry would not allow any other possibility. He judged Sirius Black to be a person who had perpetrated a heinous crime against his family, and he allowed such a judgment to direct what he did and what he thought. The possibility that he could have been wrong did not enter into his mind.  

There is a possibility that we can be wrong in our judgments about someone else. When a person is able to see the whole person and not merely what others say about such a person, then there might be a different conclusion.

Tax collectors, for example, were people who usually extorted money from the Hebrew people. They made their living by charging their own people more than the Roman tax, and therefore they were judged as evil and wrong by most of the people of Jesus’ time. Jesus saw something different about them. The tax collectors were among his listeners. Jesus knew that they could be challenged to change their thinking.
 
We judge people. Sometimes we have very strong opinions about people, and we may express those opinions to our friends. The problem is that we don’t know what makes up the inner thoughts of a person. We don’t know why they think the way they do, or even why they do the things they do. We simply judge them to be of a certain mind-set, and treat them and talk about them accordingly.
 
If we are to follow the Christian way of thinking, we must challenge our opinions, especially the opinions we might have about other people. Perhaps we could be wrong in our judgments about them. The Christian must be one who is open to the possibility that other people really are good, no matter what we or others think of them.                   

THOUGHT
 
PRAYER

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©2007 Capuchin Province of Mid-America
Fr. Mike Scully is a member of the Capuchin Province of Mid-America