Wednesday, August 27, 2003
21st Week in Ordinary Time

1st Reading: 1 Thes 2:9-13
Gospel: Mt 23:27-32

Jesus said, "Woe to you, teachers of the Law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs beautiful in appearance, but inside there are only dead bones and uncleanness. In the same way you appear as religious to others, but you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness within.

"Woe to you, teachers of the Law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous. You say: Had we lived in the time of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in the blood of prophets. So, you yourselves confess to be kins of those who murdered the prophets. And now, finish off what your ancestors began!"

Commentary

It is what comes from the inside of a man that makes him either righteous or unrighteous. This is something the Scribes and Pharisees forgot. It's also something many of us tend to forget every so often. It's a natural tendency of human nature to want to look good. There isn't anything wrong with that. As a matter of fact, it's absolutely necessary. Imagine a world where people cared nothing at all for how things appeared, or how they looked. It would be a completely topsy-turvy world where even beauty and order would mean nothing. Even Jesus in another part of Scripture reminds us to not look dirty and disheveled when we fast, but that we should rather look our best. The difficulty arises, however, when in our desire to look our best, we forget that looking our best on the outside is not an end in itself, but is actually for the sake of being even better on the inside. The order and beauty we wish to display exteriorly should be an expression of the order and beauty we possess interiorly. Otherwise it would be nothing but a sham, and our lives-like those of the Scribes and Pharisees"-will be nothing more than a hypocritical show, our religion like "whitewashed tombs" clean on the outside but full of rotting filth on the inside. There must be a harmony between our exterior life, meaning our actions and our words, and our interior life, meaning our motives, dispositions, and inclinations. A good heart produces good words and deeds. A heart that is only full of contempt for one's fellowmen and women cannot bear fruit in words and deeds.

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