Fr Paul reads from the Gospel of Luke (6: 39-42) in which Jesus tells the parable about the difficulties of one blind person leading another. Fr Paul notes as Luke draws his Sermon on the Plain to an end, he gives us two of Jesus’ warnings, both of which are expressed in the vivid language with the total exaggeration which is so characteristic of Jesus’ teaching. Today is the first of those warnings and it is against using others to measure ourselves. It is so easy to excuse ourselves by comparing ourselves to others, focusing on their faults and failings to divert attention from our own: ‘I might have many faults (we say), but look at hers or his’. Hence Jesus saying, ‘How can we see the splinter in the eye of someone when we have a plank in our own eye?’ If we are so blind that we see nothing at all then, again as Jesus says, we will inevitably fall into the pit. The only acceptable focus, the only acceptable standard of comparison for a disciple of Jesus is not a fellow disciple, but the master. The master is the role-model on whom the disciple must be shaped. For Luke, Jesus is the only model that we should look to and reflect in our lives.Fr Paul invites us to  keep this in mind as we live out our lives today.