Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent and today's readings help us prepare for it by focusing on two fundamental needs of our soul: conversion and the examination of conscience that leads to it. Or, as Our Lord says, to produce good fruits and not bad ones. This is the meaning of Lent: to discard bad fruits and try to produce good fruits. And for this we need to examine ourselves.
The first reading offers some useful metaphors for personal examination. A sieve is shaken to separate the good from the bad. The sieve lets the good wheat pass into the sack, but retains the useless chaff. We could ask ourselves: what is good wheat in me, and what is useless chaff, that is to say, only appearance but without substance? The kiln tests the potter's work: its fire shows what is of good quality and what is bad. Or the fruit trees: just as the fruit reveals the quality of the tree, our thoughts reveal the moral quality of our mind.
We may not be accustomed to examine our conscience to see the state of our soul. Many people think they are fine, just as a man with defective vision may think his clothes are clean because he does not see well or look carefully, when in fact he has many stains.
Jesus gives amusing examples of how little we can know ourselves, starting with two blind men trying to guide each other. As he says"Won't they both fall into the hole?". Of course they will fall. Sometimes we do the same. We look for blind guides, people who tell us what we want to hear, who confirm us in our bad lives.
The second example is that of the person who sees a splinter in someone else's eye and does not notice the beam in his own. With a large beam in one's own eye, it would be difficult to even walk! And yet, instead of trying to solve it, some people fixate (and exaggerate) on the small flaws, the "speckles"from the eyes of others.
Thus, there are two ways to avoid conversion: the first is to look for bad guides who only confirm us in our sins; the second is to focus on the (often small) defects of others as a way to avoid facing our own. Conversion requires, therefore, seeking good guides (such as spiritual accompaniment or the reading of good spiritual books), good companions, who guide us on the right path, and realizing that it is I who must be converted, not others.
Then we will be good trees bearing good fruit, as Jesus speaks of in the Gospel. From the reservoir of goodness in our heart will spring good deeds, and not bad ones.
