What a wonderful week of spiritual reading for those who make the daily Gospel a central focus of their spirituality. This 21st week in Ordinary Time offers readings from Chapter 23 of Matthew’s Gospel, where the focus is on the Scribes and Pharisees and what Jesus sees as the hypocrisy of their religious practices, which impose heavy burdens on ordinary people without taking them on themselves.
Note the contrast between today’s first reading, from 2 Thessalonians, and the Gospel. In 2 Thessalonians, St. Paul holds up for our admiration the “endurance and faith in all your persecutions and the afflictions you endure.” In the Gospel, Jesus condemns the Pharisees as hypocrites, “blind ones” who make the gift on the altar more important than the altar itself, which “makes the gift sacred.”
On Wednesday of this week, which happens to be the feast of Saint Augustine this year, Saint Paul praises his fellow missionaries for presenting themselves as models for their congregations to follow. In the Gospel, Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees as “whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside. “On the outside, you appear righteous, but inside, you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.”
We need to understand the contrasts between the true followers of the Lord and those who only appear to be faith-filled. I look into my soul, asking the Lord to keep me vigilant against smug self-satisfaction and judgmental behavior, to be ever watchful for opportunities to help others and to inspire in ourselves and others genuine love of the Lord and one another. This week’s saints — Monica, Augustine, and John the Baptist — model for us the behavior of loving, faith-filled, and courageous Christians.
Prayer:
Complete within us, O Lord, we pray, the healing work of your mercy and graciously perfect and sustain us so that in all things we may please you. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayer after Communion today)
