Saturday. [II Cor. 3:12-18; Luke 6:1-10]

   The Lord’s disciples pluck the ears of grain, rub them in their hands and eat them on the Sabbath—a deed very unimportant both in appearance and in essence; meanwhile the Pharisees could not restrain themselves and rebuked them. What made them raise this issue? In appearance—unreasoning zeal, but in essence—the spirit of judgmentalness. This sticks to everything and presents all in a sombre form of unlawfulness and destructiveness. This infirmity, to a greater or lesser degree, is common to almost all people who do not watch themselves. Not everyone will express judgmental thoughts in word, but it is rare for a person to refrain from them. Someone sits beside the heart and stirs up judgmentalness—it pours forth. But at the same time the judge himself is prepared to do deeds which are not good, as long as nobody sees, and he is unfailingly in a state that is not so good in some way. It is as though he judges and condemns for that very reason—in order to satisfy his inwardly insulted and suppressed feeling of righteousness with attacks on others, groundless as they may be. He who loves righteousness and stands in it, knowing how difficult it is to attain correctness in deeds and even more so in feelings, will never judge; he is ready sooner to cover with leniency not only small, but also great transgressions of others. The Lord does not judge the judging Pharisees, but indulgently explains to them that the disciples did something that anyone would excuse if they thought about it rightly. And it almost always is this way: think reasonably about your neighbor’s actions and you will find that it does not at all have that serious, ghastly character which you saw at first.