Homily | 12 September 2025

Dear Brothers,

In today’s Gospel Jesus tells us something very down-to-earth, and He asks us: “Can a blind man lead a blind man?” (Luke 6:39). The answer is as simple as it is obvious: No, because both would fall into the pit. It almost sounds humorous, and yet a deep truth lies within.

We live in a world full of voices: headlines, posts, tweets, opinions every second. Many seek to give direction—some loudly, some aggressively. And we notice how easily we can fall into the temptation of blindly following the blind: fake news, rash judgments, simplistic slogans. Jesus’ words sound like a wake-up call: Test carefully whom you are following! Open your eyes, look closely, before you try to lead others.
I sense that Jesus is not trying to convince us with an intellectual argument, but with an experience that everyone knows:

Whoever wants to lead others must be able to see himself, must have a watchful gaze. Leadership requires orientation, clarity, and a sense of reality. And that orientation is not found in the headlines, but in HIM. Our time hungers for people who are not just know-it-alls, but true disciples of Jesus and His message of the Kingdom of God already breaking in—people willing to be transformed by the Gospel themselves.
Then Jesus expands the image and asks further: “Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?” (Luke 6:41).

Here it becomes uncomfortable. Who does not know this? We are quick to point out the speck in another’s eye—their mistakes, their weaknesses, their decisions we find questionable. But our own limitations, our blind spots, even our deafness to the Gospel in our own lives—we prefer to overlook them. I do not exclude myself from this. It is often easier to seek the beam in the other than to take a hard look at oneself.
Yet, dear Brothers, the decisive point is this: Jesus does not speak these words to expose us, but to teach us to see.

The Kingdom of God that has dawned with Him is a kind of new eyesight. Whoever lives within the horizon of His Kingdom sees the world, the Church, the Order differently—not from the perspective of power, strategy, or self-protection, but from the standards of God: justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
The Kingdom of God is not a distant ideal, but a reality that reaches into our very deliberations. It confronts us with the question: Do we lead one another because we have learned to see? Or do we stumble blindly side by side?

Here our Holy Father Augustine is an important companion and source of inspiration. He was not one to hide his own weaknesses. He knew his blindness, his wanderings, his restlessness. But he learned that true sight is only possible when one exposes oneself to the light of God.

In the Confessions he writes: “But you were more inward than my innermost self and higher than my highest.” (Conf. III,6,11). This shows us: Clear vision does not come through self-optimization, but through letting HIM look upon me—honestly, without masks. That is one perspective. Another shines through when he writes: “Love is the root of all good.” (Sermo 179A,5). Love—caritas—is the eye that truly sees. Without love, our sight remains clouded. This is no less true today. We need these healing eyes of love, so as not to be crushed by the anger of our age.

What might this mean for us, dear Brothers?

Perhaps the Kingdom of God becomes visible exactly where people—where we—try to look at the world and at others differently:
- where we do not judge one another too quickly, but listen,
- where we do not turn away from need, but face it,
- where we do not seek the guilty, but take responsibility,
- where we do not simply ask, “Who is right?” but, “How can we carry one another?”

It means: less complaining about others’ weaknesses, less wasted energy on listing deficits. Rather: more courage to examine our own structures, habits, and sometimes our own inertia.

And it also means: keeping our eyes on the signs of the times. Augustine stressed again and again: God speaks through Scripture, but also through the present moment. We would be blind if we only looked inward and failed to notice the world around us, the people with their joys and hopes, their grief and anxieties (cf. GS 1)—as well as their crises and their questions, including their questions addressed to us.

The Gospel calls us less to self-accusation than to honest seeing.

And Jesus’ question to us, dear Brothers, remains:

With what eyes do I see my brother, my sister, my fellow human being today? With the eyes of a judge—or do I dare to look with the eyes of God?

Then we as an Order, as a community, as a Church will not fall blindly into the pit. We will be able to accompany one another—not because we are perfect, but because we allow ourselves to be guided by God’s gaze, by His Kingdom that has already begun among us. Amen.