Wednesday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 16, 2021

Luke 11, 42-46

The Lord said: “Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done, without overlooking the others. Woe to you Pharisees! You love the seat of honor in synagogues and greetings in marketplaces. Woe to you! You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.”  Then one of the scholars of the law said to him in reply, “Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.” And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law! You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”

“You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb.”  In Leviticus 27, 30-32 and Deuteronomy 14, 22-29, the Law commanded the Israelites to tithe — to give up a tenth — certain kinds of produce, but this did not include “of mint and of rue and of every garden herb”.  This is an example of how the Pharisees went beyond the Law in their zeal to obey it.  We see other examples of this in their overly restrictive interpretation of what could and could not be done on the Sabbath and on their insistence that all Jews had to follow the purification laws that the Law only applied to the priests on duty in the Temple.  The Lord concedes the tithing of these little things (“These you should have done”) in order to make his point (“without overlooking the others” — judgment and love for God).  Jesus is accusing the Pharisees of loving their interpretation of the Law while ignoring justice and of not loving God — the God who gave the Law.

“Woe to you Pharisees!”  The Lord delivers these words twice on this occasion, according to St. Luke.  The Lord is using a Hebrew literary device to employ emphasis.  The Greek word translated as “woe” can also be translated as “alas”, implying that the Lord Jesus already foresees their doom.  “You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.”  Walking over a grave caused a person to become ritually unclean, to the Jewish understanding.  An unclean grave was an especial peril because a person would not realize his condition and so wind up breaking other laws.  By characterizing the Pharisees as “unseen graves”, Jesus is teaching that not only do they not help others to live according to the Law, but insidiously they cause people to break the Law.

“Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.”  This scholar of the Law was not telling Jesus something he did not know, for most of these scholars were Pharisees, but rather is offering support to the Pharisees whom Jesus had accused of godlessness.  The Lord now turns to these: “You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”  In their obsession with the Law, they had completely put out of their minds its Giver and the reason for the Law in the first place, which was to enable the people to serve their God.  

With their rulings and interpretations the Pharisees and the scholars of the Law had made the Law an obstacle to the service of God.  The Lord came in part not just to restore it but to fulfill it, revealing its full meaning, as he does in the Sermon on the Mount, for instance.  In doing so, he shows how the Law can now not only show how to serve God here on earth but also how it can lead us to virtue and to heaven.

It is so easy for us in living our lives to lose sight of the God who gives us life and to forget the purpose for which he gives it to us.  We should place reminders of him — holy pictures, statues, crucifixes all over, especially in the bedrooms, living rooms, and dining rooms of our houses.  We can also wear crucifixes, scapulars, or blessed medals around our necks and carry rosaries in our pockets and purses.  Most of all, we should cultivate our minds so that we remember God regularly throughout our day.