Friday after the Eighth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on July 30, 2021 by under
Scripture: St. Matthew 23:23-36 (NKJV)
23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and shave neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. 24 Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’
31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. 33 Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? 34 Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, 35 that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
Devotion
Again and again, our Lord proclaims woe to the scribes and Pharisees on account of their hypocrisy. They had cultivated an outward appearance of piety capable of fooling the people into believing that that they were faithful teachers, even as they were self-indulgent persecutors of the Church. But their outward deception could not deceive the One who perceives the hearts of men.
This is the nature of the righteousness of the Pharisees: it is a religion of outward appearances, and not one of inward repentance. It was not that they lacked for language about repentance—after all, they mimicked piety when they spoke ill of their forefathers: “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.” But the Lord noted the admission at the heart of such feigned piety: the Pharisees acknowledged they were the spiritual kin of the persecutors of the Church. If they did not repent, they would prove their connection with what their spiritual forefathers had done, for if they did not repent, then their persecution of the saints of God would resulting in that terrifying conclusion: “… that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth…”
The rebuke delivered to the Pharisees is a call for all to repent of such spiritual hypocrisy and trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy and plenteous redemption.
Prayer: Grant to us, Lord, we beseech Thee, the Spirit to think and do always such things as are right; that we, who cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy will; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
