The Jewish leaders in today’s gospel are a sterling example of how easy it is to recognize others’ faults and how blind we are to our own. They were quick to acknowledge that it was the son who, in spite of his initial refusal to “go and work in the vineyard,” was eventually obedient and “did the will of the father,” not the son in the parable who merely gave lip service to his father. Their hearts and minds, however, remained closed to Jesus’ message for them. They couldn’t see that the parable had their name on it.

Jesus made the same point in what we know as the Sermon on the Mount, where he castigates us as hypocrites for seeing the speck in our neighbor’s eye while failing to see the log in our own eye (Mt.7:3-5, also in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain Lk.6:41-42). How often that is our story! We hear the preacher speaking directly to our neighbor in the pew across the aisle, never realizing it as God’s word to us.

St. Ignatius recommends a spiritual practice to help open our eyes to the logs that are blinding us—what he calls a daily examen. If you are feeling a niggling somewhere inside at this point, you might want to give it a try. The daily examen consists of two parts: an examen of consciousness and an examen of conscience. In the examen of consciousness, we look back over the day to see where we saw God at work in our lives, how we heard God’s word, when we were aware of God’s presence, and having recognized God’s grace, we give thanks for the blessings and consolations. In the examen of conscience, we look back over the day to see where we have missed the mark, to recognize what we have done that we ought not to have done and what we have not done that we ought to have done. As we do this, God opens our eyes to begin to see the logs that we have been ignoring. As our hearts are convicted, we can come to repentance and amendment of life. Through it all, “it is God work is at work in you [as he was in the first son in the gospel], enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”