A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew (Mt 23:27-32)
Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth. Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.”
Jesus judges incisively the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, yet the Son of God is the Just Judge. The words Jesus chooses to address the Pharisees likens them to tombs and what is inside them. He describes the ghastly appearance of death, the death of those who live a life of whitewashed appearances, a life of feigned holiness. “Thus you bear witness against yourselves,” Jesus tells them, “that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets.” But as the responsorial psalm makes clear, there is nothing hidden that God cannot see: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light’–For you darkness itself is not dark, and night shines as the day.”
God, help me understand the relevance of today’s Gospel. Your word is at work in me now, as Saint Paul says, yet I often choose to put on appearances and be on guard to uphold my self-image, the edifice I have built and shore up for the sake of others. Jesus cuts deep only to heal when he calls out arrogance and hypocrisy for the spiritual decay that results: “full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.” Give me the grace to abandon what is futile and foolish and do what is pleasing to you. Help me see that in the light of your presence there is no place to hide. Teach me, God, to love you, through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son.
From the first reading: “And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.