Word to the Wise
Monday, August 26, 2024 - Monday in the 21th Week in Ordinary Time
[2 Thess 1:1-5, 11-12 and Matt 23:13-22]"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the Kingdom of heaven before men. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter." [Matthew]
The entire twenty-third chapter of the Gospel According to Matthew is dedicated to a denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' and the evangelist's time. They were all laypersons who were considered experts in the content of the law (scribes) or its observance (Pharisees). The power of the scribes came from their ability to read and write in a society that was pretty much illiterate. Thus they could write contracts and other business that required literacy. The Pharisees came into being during the time of the rulers who succeeded Alexander the Great's generals. Those leaders imposed Greek customs that were offensive to Mosaic Law. So, the Pharisees were a resistance movement in origin, but by the time of Jesus, had become simply a kind of lay religious "police." They weren't ALL bad people, as we know from the gospels, but when their power and attitudes were challenged, they could be lethal in response.
Punctilious and meticulous observance of religious customs can become a problem when they obscure the content of faith itself and try to become part of the faith. Catholic faith and Tradition can be a victim of this. This can include not only the customs and devotions themselves, but the way in which they are taught as being essential to true belief!! For clergy this can become an obsession with rubrics (those little red sentences on how to do things) and canon law. For laity it can become an obsession with devotional gestures and practices to the point that anyone who doesn't follow them are "bad" Catholics. Unity and communion can become distorted and frustrated by insistence on uniformity and compliance, resulting sometimes in the moral problem of scrupulosity.
The bitterness of Jesus' denunciation should be a warning to all of us to always be aware of the PURPOSE AND GOAL of any religious law or regulation so that we join in the accomplishment of that purpose and goal. Observance for the sake of observance will put us with the scribes and Pharisees who came under Jesus' judgment! AMEN