{"id":4567,"date":"2023-11-05T21:04:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-05T21:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=4567"},"modified":"2023-11-07T18:53:54","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T18:53:54","slug":"commentary-on-31st-sunday-of-the-year-a-5-11-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-31st-sunday-of-the-year-a-5-11-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on 31st Sunday of the year (A), 5.11.2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie <\/a><\/h3>\n

Mt 23:1-12<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,\u00a0 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.\u00a0 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.\u00a0 They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.\u00a0 They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.\u00a0 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students.\u00a0 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father \u2013 the one in heaven.\u00a0 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah.\u00a0 The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.<\/em><\/p>\n

Great hypocrites are the real atheists, someone said.\u00a0 They clothe themselves with the trappings of religion, but their hearts are untouched by it.\u00a0 In this way they make it appear to the world that religion has no heart.<\/p>\n

The Pharisees were a rigorously pious sect within Judaism. \u00a0But Jesus was in constant conflict with them and called them hypocrites.\u00a0 In asking us to read the above passage today, the Liturgy clearly wants to send a message to their successors: the clerical and other religious figures of our day.<\/p>\n

It’s never a good time to be a hypocrite.\u00a0 Hypocrisy is harder to practise than almost any other vice.\u00a0 You can speak evil of your neighbours for half an hour a day, you can be a glutton for an hour or two, but you have to be a hypocrite all day long.\u00a0 Has it any redeeming features?\u00a0 Yes, one.\u00a0 If you want to be cured, that is very easily done.\u00a0 It is cured by the mere acknowledgement of it.\u00a0 If you say, “I have a terrible temper,” that won’t cure you of your temper; but if you say, “I’m a hypocrite,” you’re no longer a hypocrite.\u00a0 (A real hypocrite would never say, “I’m a hypocrite.”)\u00a0 Or, more painfully, if someone else proves you a hypocrite, you can no longer carry it off.\u00a0 There is a great cleansing going on, and the Church is all the better for it.\u00a0\u00a0 Lamenting the modern age is a fashion with many people, but the modern age has one great virtue: it provides little or no cover for hypocrites.<\/p>\n

Office and hypocrisy and flattery go together.\u00a0 There is less guaranteed respect for office now than there used to be.\u00a0 Someone who is propelled into some high office\u00a0 –\u00a0 possibly to his or her own surprise\u00a0 –\u00a0 feels inadequate for the job, and therefore begins to put on an act.\u00a0 There is some kind of deep unrecognised humility in this: someone described hypocrisy as the tribute that vice pays to virtue.\u00a0 The flattery that still\u00a0 follows the job (to some degree) drives that humility further into the shadows, and there is no longer any easy way out.\u00a0 Exposure then is the only way.<\/p>\n

“The greatest among you must be your servant. \u00a0All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”\u00a0 The Gospel turns everything upside down, or rather the right way up.\u00a0 The greatest is the least, by the very fact of thinking he’s the greatest; and the least is the greatest, by the very fact of thinking he’s the least.\u00a0 For a Christian everything is on the ground.\u00a0 The word ‘humility’ comes from the Latin ‘humus’, which means earth.\u00a0 St Augustine said that God accepts sacrifices only from the altar of humility.\u00a0 A woman told the zen master Shunryu Suzuki that she found it difficult to mix meditation practice with the demands of rearing a family.\u00a0 “I feel I’m trying to climb a ladder; but for every step upwards, I slip backwards two steps.”\u00a0 “Forget the ladder!” he told her.\u00a0 “In meditation everything is right here on the ground.”<\/p>\n

Because everything is on the ground there are no bigwigs of any account.\u00a0 “Call no one on earth your father.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie Mt 23:1-12 Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,\u00a0 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.\u00a0 They tie up heavy burdens,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4568,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4567"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7993,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4567\/revisions\/7993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}