Monday, XXI Week of Ordinary Time
(Matthew 23)
This is the last week that the daily gospels are taken from St. Matthew’s version. Next week we launch afresh into Jesus’ ministry through the eyes of Luke. Now we meet Jesus is in Jerusalem. He has cleaned out the Temple and is waiting for the wrath of the religious leaders to fall upon him. In the meantime, as we see this week, he criticizes the Pharisees for their abusive teaching and prepares his followers for his imminent departure.
But we should not think that Jesus was historically incensed with the Pharisees as much as he appears in the gospel today. The setting reflects the situation of the church at the time of Matthew’s writing, perhaps fifty years after Jesus died. By then Judaism was in reform with the Romans demolishing the Temple. Its religious leaders, predominantly Pharisees, had to draw lines in the sand to distinguish its full followers and those who might be Christian in heart but still attending synagogue services as well. They persecuted Christians severely and Matthew shows how Jesus might have defended his followers if he were present in the late first century. Today we should hear Jesus’ critique not so much of first century Judaism but of religious zealots in general.
Jesus’ first charge is that Pharisees deprive people of access to the Kingdom. In other words the religious leaders actually prevent the people from knowing God. Certainly the clerical abuse of children has exemplified this condemnation of Jesus. Then Jesus criticizes the Pharisees’ proselytism which makes fanatics of religious converts. Proselytism has become a sensitive issue as some religious leaders have called for Christians to stop evangelizing among Jews and Muslims. But such a halt would mean unfaithfulness to Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations. Nevertheless, Christians must respect the holiness of other religions by acknowledging that the Holy Spirit may indeed be present to their peoples. Finally, Jesus condemns the way Pharisees try to manipulate the law by drawing meaningless distinctions between gold and Temple or between gift and altar. Catholic leaders who say that the unmarried may have sex as long as it is done “responsibly” or that one can miss Mass on Sunday as long as you go once during the week make the same kind of wrongful distinction as the Pharisees here.
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