Gospel Delights!

Wednesday, August 30, 2029

1 Thes 2:9-13; Mt 23:27-32

In today’s gospel, Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees. That he detests the vice is seen in his pronouncement ‘Woe to you.’ Just like the white-washed tomb that only housed the bones of the dead, they had no problem pretending to be who they were not. What angers Jesus more is not just that they were ‘comfortably’ hypocritical but that they had no compunction of heart to do it in God’s name. For instance, they looked pious; however, their piety was more of an attention-seeking behaviour. 

In the second pronouncement of Jesus, the ‘dual life’ of the Scribes and Pharisees is exposed again in the way they honor their dead. For Jesus, the homage they paid to their dead is an indirect approval of what their ancestors did in terms of shedding the prophets’ blood. Jesus is rankled by their words – ‘if we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets’ blood’ – because they have been conspiring against his life besides making him endure rejection and denouncement in his public ministry. Just as Jesus predicts, these pretenders who now say ‘we wouldn’t have’ are precisely the ones we find saying ‘crucify him’ (Mt 27: 22, 23) and ‘let his blood be on us and on our children’ (Mt 27:25). 

In sum, with their double-dealing, the Scribes and Pharisees were more guilty than their ancestors in two regards: they were hypocritical in the name of God; secondly, they not just rejected Jesus but crucified him who was ‘more than a prophet’ – the Son of God. Remorse not justification is what Jesus expects from them. But he is disappointed that what he found in the good thief (Lk 23:39-42) was absent in them. When we fail in our weakness, what we need is a remorseful confession out of humility and not a prideful justification. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar