Addressing the people and his disciples Jesus said, ‘The Scribes and the Pharisees occupy the chair of Moses. You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not be guided by what they do: since they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but will they lift a finger to move them? Not they! Everything they do is done to attract attention, like wearing broader phylacteries and longer tassels, like wanting to take the place of honour at banquets and the front seats in the synagogues, being greeted obsequiously in the market squares and having people call them Rabbi.

You, however, must not allow yourselves to be called Rabbi, since you have only one Master, and you are all brothers. You must call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor must you allow yourselves to be called teachers, for you have only one Teacher, the Christ.

The greatest among you must be your servant. Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.’ (Matthew 23:1-12)

Reflection - Sincere and grounded faith

The warnings against the leaders conclude this week. This is the final part of this series of readings in which Jesus strongly criticises various groups of leaders who have failed to grasp what religion and faith in God are really about.

The problem centres around the belief that religious practice is all that is necessary to be justified in God’s eyes. According to Jesus, however, it is really about conversion, the continual process of turning oneself towards God. Bit by bit as our hearts are changed by the Holy Spirit we come to see with God’s eyes and feel with God’s heart. That is why Jesus insists that it is what is within one’s heart that is important, not how many religious laws one fulfils.

The Scribes and Pharisees have a ‘one-dimensional’, narrow view of religion and faith. Jesus’ view embraces the whole person in the journey of faith. As St Paul puts it in the Letter to the Romans: faith is a journey of being remade in the image and likeness of Christ. It changes and transforms every part of us.

No true believer can live as though faith and life are separate. Often contemporary civil leaders wish that the Church would confine its comments only to ‘religious’ things. For us, all the dimensions of life are part of our religious framework – social, political, economic, physical, psychological, mental and spiritual.

All these are viewed from the perspective of our faith. As Pope John Paul II said, “The light of the Gospel must be brought to bear on every aspect of human life.” Our moral sense of what is right and wrong develops as we reflect on the issues of human life in the light of the Gospel.

Ours is never an attitude of “all’s fair in love and war”. No matter what the issue, or what sphere of human endeavour in which we are involved, our words and actions must always be true to the values of our Christian life.

With Christ as our only teacher we learn the ways of wisdom and love. We learn how to live, not by the values of the world, but by the values of the Spirit.

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