Wednesday of Week 21 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 23:27-32

We come today to the last two of the seven ‘Woes’ which Jesus throws against Pharisaism.  Again it is an attack on hypocrisy and he gives two examples:

6. …you are like whitewashed tombs… (vv 27-28)

On the one hand he compares the Pharisees to “whited sepulchres” (“whitewashed tombs” in the NRSVue translation), a phrase (like many others) that has found its way into everyday English through the King James version of the Bible. In other words, they are like the tombs that people in Palestine could often see spotlessly clean in their whitewashed stones, but which inside were full of the decaying and rotting bodies of the dead. 

One reason they were whitewashed was because a person who unwittingly stepped on a grave became ritually unclean.  Whitewashing made them more visible, especially in the dark. The Pharisees put on an external show of religious perfection down to the tiniest detail, but inside, their hearts and minds were full of pride and hatred and contempt for their fellow man.  It was epitomised in the story that Jesus told of the Pharisee and the tax collector who went to the Temple to pray.  The sanctimonious prayer of the Pharisee was:

God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
(Luke 18:11)

It was, of course, to some extent true, but it closed his mind to a different kind of sin altogether—his pride and imagined self-sufficiency.  As Jesus will say in another place, the greatest sin of the pharisaical is their sheer blindness, the inability to see themselves for what they really are. This, I suppose, is the most dangerous sin of the pious in any age, and yet the one least likely to be confessed and repented. And it can happen to any of us.

7. …you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous… (vv 29-32)

On the other hand, mention of tombs leads Jesus to comment on the Pharisees’ pride over the tombs they have built in memory of the prophets and other holy people. They congratulate themselves that, if they had been present, they would never have partaken in the actions which brought persecution and death to the prophets.  Yet here is Jesus, the prophet of all prophets, whom they are preparing to kill. 

In the last verse of our reading, Jesus tells them to go ahead and complete the murdering of the prophets, referring to what is going to happen to himself.  This is another classic example of the blindness of the self-righteous. The more committed we are to our Christian faith and to the behaviour that it expects, the greater the danger that we, too, can fall into the same trap and see ourselves on a higher level than others whose behaviour we deplore and perhaps even attack. 

Whole groups of such people have been appearing in recent years, people who claim to know the Church better than the Pope, who still deplore the ‘heresies’ of the Second Vatican Council, or who close themselves off into elitist groups afraid of being contaminated not only by the ‘world’, but even by other Catholics!

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Wednesday of Week 21 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

Paul defends his behaviour with the Thessalonians where he had been treated very badly by a group of people. He reminds them of how he and his fellow evangelisers used to work night and day so as not to be a burden on them while they preached the gospel among them. 

We know that, wherever he could, Paul supported himself and was not ashamed to be known by his trade—a tentmaker.  As he said in yesterday’s reading, he never insisted on what he believed were his rights as an evangeliser. The Greeks tended to despise manual labour and viewed it as fit only for slaves, but Paul was not ashamed of doing any sort of work that would help further the gospel. He never wanted to be unnecessarily dependent on others.

The Thessalonians themselves have seen—as has God himself—how Paul’s behaviour among them has always been impeccable and upright.  Paul never hesitates to admit his weaknesses, but he also is not afraid to speak of his strengths and he does here (see also his strong self-defence in 2 Corinthians). He and his companions always treated the Thessalonians as a father would his children, urging them, encouraging them, and appealing to them to live a life worthy of the God who calls them to share his Kingdom and his glory. He is proud of the example he has set to others.  It was a work combining both dedication and affection. 

In calling them to share God’s Kingdom he is true to the core of Jesus’ teaching.  ‘Kingdom’ is not a term Paul uses very often, but he did use it once to sum up the message of his teaching.  This was during his address of farewell to the elders at Ephesus:

And now I know that none of you, among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom, will ever see my face again. (Acts 20:25)

Now Paul continually thanks God for them, because as soon as they heard the word which Paul brought them as God’s message, they welcomed it for what it was—not the word of a mere human being (Paul), but God’s own word, a power that is now working among them as believers. 

This perception has enabled them to be steadfast in the face of opposition. We have here, too, a brief summary of the apostolic tradition: the message is first ‘received’, or ‘heard’.  It then penetrates the mind or heart, where it is welcomed, and proves that the hearer acknowledges God has been speaking through his missionary.

In all our Christian living we, too, need to be aware that our greatest impact is made not just by the words we speak, but also by the example of our lives—by the love and care and compassion that we show.  And the real test of our Christian witness is not that people say how holy we are, but that they themselves are led to God.

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