Tuesday 21st week in ordinary time
"Mt 23:23-26"
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity. You blind Pharisee! First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean."
Jesus reproaches the guile and hypocrisy of the Pharisees. They were only worried about what people saw or thought about them. They were masters of 'deception', of disguise, of making everyone think well of them. They made life difficult for everyone with their impositions, but didn't care about the law of God. They thought they could fool people but they couldn't fool God.
Saints have never been worried about what people thought about them. Their only concern was about what God thought about them. And so they never lost their peace when others said or did all kinds of things against them - as Jesus himself said would happen. On the contrary, saints were always at ease, for they knew that doing the Will of God often clashes with doing the will of people.
In August 1642 two soldiers escorted an eighty-six-year-old priest along Bianchi Street to the prisons of the Inquisition. His name was Joseph of Calasanz, founder of the Religious Order of the Piarists. He had been arrested suddenly on a false accusation - with no time even to take his hat with him. He walked, stooped and shaky, but very calm. So calm that during the interrogation he fell asleep! Eventually he was removed from the Institution he had founded and died soon afterwards. Fortunately, a few years later everything was put right: the slander was revealed, the Piarists became a religious order and he became Saint Joseph of Calasanz.
Mary, my Mother, help me to live detached from the opinion of others; and only be concerned about what my Father God thinks of me.
