The readings for the third Sunday of Advent in the Catholic lectionary include this passage from the Letter of James: “Do not complain, brothers and sisters, about one another, that you may not be judged. Behold, the Judge is standing before the gates.” (5:7-10)

 This must be one of the most difficult rules of Christian conduct to keep. People constantly complain about each other, all the more so those who live close to one another: Husbands complain about wives, and wives about husbands; parents complain about children, and children about parents; sisters about sisters, and brothers about brothers; relatives, friends, neighbors, and co-workers, everyone complains about each other.

People don’t complain about their enemies, or people they don’t know or care about. We complain about people of whom we feel we have the right to expect more or better than we find in them sometimes. We complain about our friends. It is the people close to us who so often disappoint or irritate us, and that is the reason we complain about them.

This instruction from the Letter of James is addressed to a small, close-knit Christian community. It is a warning to stop complaining about one another that you may not be judged. James is recalling Jesus’ teaching in his Sermon on the Mount: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” (Matthew 7:1-2) He is reminding his community that the Lord was to be their Judge, measuring to each one what he or she had measured out to others; we will all be “hoisted on our own petard,” in other words.

That is a novel and unwelcome concept, is it not? For in our normal way of thinking we are all measured by the same standards of conduct, some of us measuring up better than others—namely, I measuring up better (at least on this occasion) than my spouse, parent, child, sister, brother, relative, friend, neighbor or co-worker. And we think that gives us the right to complain about that person. We don’t welcome the idea that our complaint about another is to be turned back upon ourselves; we are not used to thinking of ourselves as all together under judgment; all equally in need of mercy.

Monastic communities used to have what was known as the “Chapter of Faults.” Every week or so, the community would gather, and each member would accuse himself of some small breach of conduct. These were not sins. The Chapter of Faults was not a collective confession. “Small breaches of conduct” were things like breaking silence or talking out of turn; being careless about household duties or community prayers; being late; oversleeping or falling asleep in class; being rude or bossy, fooling around, or dawdling. A veteran of these practices used to regale me with funny stories about the Chapter of Faults: One day, he couldn’t think of anything to confess, so he told the community that he wasted time blowing dust balls around under his bed.

When it was working at its best (and you can imagine how silly an exercise like this could sometimes become), the Chapter of Faults had the effect of forestalling criticism, encouraging humility, and avoiding the build-up of ill-feeling in a community that could easily give rise to real sins of detraction, on the one hand, or resentment on the other. People were helped to practice what our Lord commanded when he said, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5)

Let me give you an example from my own community. Chapter of Faults had been abolished by the time I entered. But one day we were having a short business meeting, and one of our brothers raised his hand and told us he had seen a mophead lying on the ground under one of the windows. Some careless brother had left it there, he complained, glaring at the rest of us. The Superior responded, “If you saw it, why didn’t you go out and pick it up?” Thereby his complaint was turned back upon himself; he was “hoisted on his own petard.” I admit the rest of us enjoyed that moment hugely. To his credit, the complaining brother admitted that he should have picked the mophead up, and the guilty brother was moved to admit he had been careless.

That is the kind of thing, in everyday matters of life, that makes for a good community. In religious life, we all have to learn to stop competing for the prize of being right. We all have to learn to judge ourselves before we presume to judge others. In this season of Advent, we are meant to recall that we all have a Judge, standing before the gates of our souls. The good news is, this Judge is merciful—as we are not, so often, with each other. Begging for his mercy, for ourselves and one another, we have the chance of living happily in our communities, accepting one another’s little faults and foibles, being bound together by the spirit of humility and love.