Jesus said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are of full of dead men's bones and every kind of filth. Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but outside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets' blood'. Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murmured the prophets; not fill up what your ancestors measured out!"
The Word in other words
Out of laziness I usually do not do regular full-blown room cleaning. I am very proud of this but I usually just kind of hide the dust and all those unsavory tiny trashes under my bed, only to suffer later on when all that dirt burst out in full force. Then, I will tel myself that it is good immediately to vacuum away all those tiny devils... this is House Work 101.
In the Gospel today Jesus lambasts the scribes and Pharisees for what He says is their hypocrisy. They build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous maybe to hide the sins of their fathers and to cover up for their own inequities. An evil that is tucked away would soon rear it ugly head when they would conspire to have Jesus killed.
We are supposedly very good Catholics. We donate images of saints to the Church, volunteer to have the dress of the Madonna made, or pull the carts of holy images during fiestas. The scribes and Pharisees whiten tombstones and burial monuments, yet Jesus castigates them, for they are dirty and rotten within.
The scribes and Pharisees could not hide behind stones. Nor can we hide behind the skirt of the blessed mother. If there is dirt within us, then we better vacuum it away, for "when sin reaches maturity if gives birth to death." (Jas 1.12-18).
The sacrament of reconciliation, the church's ready vacuum cleaner, is just around the corner.
- Fr. Dante Barril, SVD (Rome, Italy)
