Daily Reflection Memorial of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Today, late in Matthew in chapter 23, we begin Jesus’ seven woes to the Pharisees with the first three we hear now. The rest will follow in Wednesday’s liturgy. The woes also appear in Luke but there are only six in that gospel account. The King James Bible included an eighth woe in the verse Mt 23:14 (“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore, you will receive greater condemnation.”). However, this verse is almost the same as Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47 and it is missing from many of the most ancient manuscripts of the Gospels. Therefore, most modern bibles omit Mt 23:14.

Jesus’ principal condemnation of the Pharisees (and scribes) concerned their hypocrisy (their greed and cheating also played a role). Hypocrisy comes in many forms, but religious hypocrisy is probably the worst. The four woes that follow today’s are the more memorable and bring their hypocrisy out in more vivid ways. However, the first woe sets the tone for all the rest. The Pharisees, through their impossible rules and regulations and convoluted legal confusions, kept people from loving God and one another (locking people out of the kingdom of heaven). Jesus accuses them of not even desiring themselves to enter the kingdom but doing everything they could to stop any who did wish to do so. He also famously calls them “blind guides” and “blind fools” in the third woe, giving various examples.

Religious hypocrisy is more a sin of the clergy than of anyone else, but that does not mean that everyone else cannot also fall into it. For Jesus, it appears to be one of the very greatest of sins, to pose as pious and devout, as a spiritual guide and leader, and to have it all be actually a complete lie and a fraud that leads people astray all for completely selfish purposes. It is to make religion truly false, truly dead. There are famous examples of it throughout history (I think of Jim Jones and the horrific tragedy of Jonestown, Guyana in 1974).

True religion is above all humble and honest. True religion always sees oneself as a sinner like everyone else, never judging others, never pretending to be “holier than thou.” It never scolds or lectures or shakes its head at others. True religion never looks down on anyone, no matter who they are or what they may have done. It never thinks better of oneself. True religion seeks only to love and serve all, especially the lowliest, knowing that we have all (especially oneself) been forgiven and called out of darkness. We ought also to remember Jesus’ admonition that, “Those who have been forgiven little, love little.”

Whenever we may find ourselves falling into this terrible trap (and we must confess that we all sometimes do; we must be honest with ourselves), then let us be like the tax collector of Jesus’ parable who stood far back in the temple, not even daring to look up, beating his breast begging God to have mercy on him, a sinner. For we can never forget the other figure in that parable, the Pharisee who also stood there praying, “Thank God I am not like others, thieves, rogues, adulterers!” And we also remember that only one of them left the temple that day justified (i.e., forgiven). “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”