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March 15, 2022“All Their Works Are Performed to be Seen.”
In today’s gospel from Matthew (23:1-12), Jesus takes the Scribes and the Pharisees to task for both their hypocrisy and their excessive need for
attention. Not surprisingly, this passage follows immediately after a section in which these same leaders are trying (unsuccessfully, of course) to trip Jesus up in front of the same people they are trying so hard to impress.
Psychologists tell us that we are often most critical of others for traits
within ourselves that we very much dislike. Sure sounds like hypocrisy to me.
Examples of hypocrisy abound around us. They are usually not difficult to discern.
How many abound within us? Not as easily discerned??
We all need a certain amount of attention and recognition for a healthy sense of self.
But some seek out a good deal more than that amount. Again, not usually difficult to pick out. Jesus gives several examples in today’s gospel of what these people looked like in His time. Examples abound around us
today.
I would imagine and hope that those with a reasonable amount of self-awareness, self-insight, and self-honesty know when their need for
attention is out of balance. But not everyone is blessed with these qualities in sufficient quantity.
These observations remind me (again) of what seems to me to be the
“inconvenient truth” in Jesus’ gospel message:
IT’S ALL ABOUT US. (not ME)
Put more positively, Jesus in today’s passage reminds us that—
“The greatest among you will be the one who serves the rest.”
And, as Paul said so well in his letter to the Philippians,
“Who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped.
But he emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave…
and He was humbler yet,
even to accepting death,
death on a cross.”
Very simple but challenging messages from Our Lord.
