Tuesday of the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time

The Feast of St. Louis, King of France

Matthew 23:23-26

The four priests here at Blessed Sacrament continue to feel pretty well.  We are awaiting the results of our tests.  Maybe we will hear something in a few days.

Jesus said: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. But these you should have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.”

In today’s reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew, we see the Lord pressing hard against the Pharisees and the scribes.  We might wonder why he would do this.  It is true that large numbers of them tried to steer people away from Jesus and to impede his ministry by explaining away his miracles and accusing him of breaking the law of Moses, but the crowds came and listened to him despite this, and very many of the people believed in him as the Messiah.  We must understand though that the Pharisees had become widely influential, so much so that for the ordinary Jew, the Pharisaic teaching on the law amounted to the only teaching on the law.  And yet the Pharisees took liberties with the law, upholding an oral tradition which sought to adapt the law of Moses to present circumstances.  In practice, this resulted in an unwritten code more or less equivalent to the actual law, and which went beyond it.  It is this that Jesus condemns when he cried out, quoting Isaiah: “And in vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and precepts of men” (Mark 7, 7).  Jesus condemned the Pharisees and the scribes because they taught the people their sect’s doctrines and not God’s.

An example of these precepts of men is found in “tithes of mint and dill and cummin”, which were used as spices.  Inasmuch as they were herbs, they should not have come under the law of tithing, which said, “Every year you shall set aside the tithes of all your fruits that the earth brings forth” (Deuteronomy 14, 22).  Tithing mint would be the equivalent of tithing grass or weeds.  According to the Pharisaical oral law, however, even these things must be taxed for the benefit of the Temple.  Jesus does not condemn this interpretation so much as he points out its triviality, particularly when compared with other matters: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law.”  Jesus spells out what he means by these: “Judgment and mercy and fidelity.”  That is, rather than teach the doctrines of their religion, they concern themselves with the technicalities of sustaining the Temple.  Again, Jesus does not take a position against this support, but puts it in the context of what the Pharisees and scribes fail to do.  The question should arise for them: Are we teachers of God or are we collection officers?  The Lord goes on to illustrate what they are doing: “Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!”  People who throw themselves at the enforcement of details often lack the confidence to do actual work.  It is as though through their own actions the Pharisees and scribes admit that they have no divine authority as the basis for their teaching and interpretation of the Scriptures.  Jesus calls them “blind” because they do not have the ability to see this for themselves, and yet they put themselves forward as “guides”.  And the message to the people is that they would be foolish to listen to them because no one in his right mind follows a “blind guide”.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.”  Here again, the Lord says to them, “Woe!”  The use of the word here indicates a warning of an imminent disaster.  The Lord is warning them to open their eyes and see what they are really doing and to repent.  He cried out this warning vocally two thousand years ago, and he cries it out to all sinners who are running out of time — not merely to their ears but from the midst of their hearts, from deep in their consciences.  

“You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence.”  The Pharisees and their followers had a great concern for washing various items that is not found in the law.  This is an outgrowth from the cleansing that were commanded in order to make a person or a thing ritually pure.  The Lord uses this practice to point out that they worked very hard at appearances: “And all their works they do for to be seen of men. For they make their phylacteries broad and enlarge their fringes. And they love the first places at feasts and the first chairs in the synagogues, And salutations in the market place, and to be called by men, Rabbi” (Matthew 23, 5-7).  But they were not known for their virtue: “But according to their works do ye not. For they do not practice what they preach” (Matthew 23, 3).  “Inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence: plunder through tithes, but also through the stealing of souls by their callous neglect of their duty to preach about God, his judgment to come, his mercy, and our duty to fidelity.  Self-indulgence, such as we find in Luke 18, 11: “The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give you thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess.” 

The lesson here for us as faithful Christians is to have ever before us the Cross of Jesus Christ and to be mindful of his love.  “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6, 8).