Breaking the Word

21^st Week in Ord. Time, Tuesday – 23^rd August 2022 — Gospel: Mt 23,23-26

Lack of Reverence

Jesus continues with his woes against the Pharisees and Scribes. These woes were warnings against empty actions, void of interior depth or reverence.  He calls them again and again as blind because they remained exacting and harsh in their demands. They were blind to the depth of love and reverence to which they were called. Reverence is a disposition of the heart that enables us to perceive the sacredness in others and in the world. It returns our motives from self-seeking to seeking God’s glory. It is an awareness that we completely depend on God for our salvation. Reverence fills our actions with a sense of true, noble, and exalted purpose. It reorients our way of thinking, feeling, and acting. It is a virtue we cultivate by being aware of the purpose of our actions and our relationship with God, others and all created things.

21^st Week in Ord. Time, Monday – 22^nd August 2022 — Gospel: Mt 23,13-22

Kingdom Requirements

The feast of the Queenship of Mary was established in 1954 by Pope Pius XII.  This feast is a logical follow up to the Assumption of Mary and celebrated on the octave day of that feast. Pope Pius XII, in his 1954 encyclical “To the Queen of Heaven,” pointed out that Mary deserves this title because she is Mother of God, as one who is closely associated as the New Eve with Jesus’ redemptive work, because of her preeminent perfection and of her intercessory power.

Jesus expresses the disapproval of leadership and hypocritical behaviour of Pharisees and Sadducees in chapter 23. The spiritual leaders, instead of guiding people through their Scriptural knowledge and life style, remained as spiritual hindrance to them. Therefore, the first lament (Mt 23,13) focuses on the fact that they are not entering God’s kingdom, and in turn, they are preventing others to enter. We are not told here, how one could enter God’s kingdom. However, there are many references in the Gospel about the requirements to enter into God’s kingdom. The first reference about entering into God’s Kingdom is in Mt 5,20. It is an exhortation to the disciples to exceed Pharisees and Scribes in righteousness. Based on this instruction, the whole of Mt 5,21-6,18 can be taken as a commentary on this lament. These teachings along with eternal judgment (Mt 25,31-46) could serve as guiding principles for a person to be righteous. The expression next occurs in the context of true and false disciples. Those doing God’s will (Mt 7,21) are assured entrance into the kingdom of heaven. Next when Jesus explains about humility, he speaks of the need to become like a child, which serves as the greatest requirement to enter the kingdom. In other references Jesus also warns persons who will not enter into God’s kingdom. He says that the rich will find it very difficult (Mt 19,23-24). He says to the chief priests and elders of the people that “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Mt 21,31).