Gospel: Luke
11:42-46
The Lord
said: “Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every
garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These
you should have done, without overlooking the others. Woe to you Pharisees! You
love the seat of honor in synagogues and greetings in marketplaces. Woe to you!
You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.”
Then one
of the scholars of the law said to him in reply, “Teacher, by saying this you
are insulting us too.” And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law! You
impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one
finger to touch them.
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Reflection:
Do you
live what you say? For example you will say to your children that they should live
simply yet your lifestyle is not simple because you want expensive things. How
will your children follow and believe what you say?
Jesus is
angry with the Pharisees because many of them were full of pretension their
external actions were very much different with their internal thought. They
command the people to do this and that yet they themselves were not willing to
do it.
What
Jesus wants for the Pharisees then and for us now is to lead by example; let us
mean what we say and live what we say. This is where we are often lacking, yes
we go to church and yes we worship God. But do we translate these to living acts
of faith?
Let us
not be like the Pharisees and the scholars of the law who are very good only at
giving orders. Let us be like Jesus who put into action every word and phrase
that He said.
Do you live a simple lifestyle and are you forgiving? – Marino J. Dasmarinas