Machetes on Not Judging Others

When the same old man was teaching us that no one ought to judge another, he told us that there were three things for which he had blamed and rebuked the brothers: that some let their uvula be cut out, or kept a cloak in their cell, or blessed oil and gave it to people living in the world who asked for it. And he said that he had done all these things himself: “I caught a disease of the uvula, and for so long I wasted away from its weakness that at last the force of the pain and the urging of all the elders drove me to let it be cut out. Because of this illness I was also forced to keep a cloak. “And I was also compelled to bless oil and give it to those who begged for it. I hated that above everything, because I thought it came from great presumption of heart. But suddenly many people living in the world surrounded me, and I could not possibly have escaped them in any other way. They forced it from me with no small violence and with pleading, that I would lay my hand on a vessel they offered and sign it with the sign of the cross. And so, believing they had obtained blessed oil, they at last let me go. “Through these things I clearly found out that a monk falls into the same case and is caught in the same faults for which he has dared to judge others.” [a]

So each one ought to judge only himself, and to watch with care and caution in all things not to judge the life and conduct of others, according to the apostle’s charge: “But you, why do you judge your brother? To his own master he stands or falls.” And this: “Do not judge, so that you will not be judged. For with the judgment you judge, you will be judged.” For besides the reason we have spoken of, it is dangerous to judge others for this reason too. In the matters that offend us, they are really acting rightly in the sight of God, or at any rate in a pardonable way, for a need or a reason that we do not know. So we are found to have judged them rashly, and in this we commit no light sin, by forming an opinion of our brothers different from what we ought.