Homilies

22nd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: WHAT MAKES A PERSON HYPOCRITICAL?

There are two things that make a person hypocritical. It could be out of jealousy and out of ignorance.  When a person becomes hypocritical out jealousy, he or she started to formulate such questions.  Why is he like that?  Where did he get that? How in the world did he end up there? Isn’t he the son of so and so? Is there anything good in the place where he came from?  And when a person became hypocritical out  of ignorance, its either he/she  does not know about the things  or because he/she believes  in such thing as  the only  truth.

The Pharisees and scribes were so hypocritical to Jesus because they were jealous and ignorant about Jesus. They started to ask questions why, but, only to be reminded of their ignorance and hypocrisies to God’s law. They look at defilement only as something from doing or observing against tradition.

THERE ARE many instances in our life that wherein we also act like the Pharisees and the scribes. Many times in our life, we pretend to honour God with our lips but not in action, or we pretend to be of service to God’s vineyard and yet our hearts are far from Him. There are times in our life that we often question God when others are successful, “Why he and not me?”  But in our failure, we ask God, “Why me and not he?”

In today’s gospel, Jesus lambasted the Pharisees and the scribes because they cling too much to human tradition and forget God’s commandments which are more important than human laws. He reminds them that “from within people, from their hearts come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, and folly.” For Jesus then, if there are things to be cleansed from defilement, it is our hearts and thoughts.

Jesus’ words to the Pharisees are actually a challenge and these can also apply to our lives. The attitudes of the Pharisees exist within us and therefore, we are warned by Jesus about them. We believers have the tendency to simply have a mere compliance with ritual. But if we want to a genuine worship of God, then, let us examine what we are actually doing. We humans would normally look to appearances, but let us remember that God looks to the heart.

This reminds me of a man whom I once met who never goes to Church for mass. In contrast, the wife goes to Church every day. When asked why he does not join his wife in going to Church, his reply, “Father, I don’t want to become a nagger.” He explained that when his wife arrives home, the silence of the house is broken because the wife begins to nag him and the children. The husband thought that the wife became a “nagger” because she is a Church-goer. Yes, we can be hypocrite at times. Due to our hypocrisy, our worship does not appear true and genuine. This is the thing which we must purify.

                                            [Sem MOISES ROBERT OLAVIDES, MSP
                                               MSP Seminary, Tagaytay City]

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