Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about God who gave His people the Law that became the guide and the way for them to follow, that they may find their way to Him. God provides them with those laws and instructions, because they were a people who were easily distracted and swayed by the temptations of the world, and by all the forces the devil arrayed against them.
Therefore, the Lord revealed to them through Moses the guidelines and rules to help them to maintain their lives to be holy and good at all times. This is meant to help them to overcome their wickedness and their predisposition to sin. This is meant to help them to control themselves, so that they would not fall into the temptations of Satan, and that they may walk righteously in the sight and presence of the Lord.
But those same people had also remained stubborn and unbending, refusing often to follow the laws of the Lord, and they preferred to follow their own ways and paths. They failed to understand why the Lord gave them those laws, and even complained why they were oppressed with such laws and regulations. They thought that they wanted freedom, to be free from the restrictions and boundaries set by the Lord.
God knows us well, brothers and sisters in Christ. He knows all the things that we can do, and which we are fully capable of, and He is trying in His own manner and ways, to help us to overcome this. But ultimately, all these stem from one fact that we must all be fully aware of, that our Lord and God is loving, merciful and caring, especially towards all of us, who are the greatest and most beloved of all His creations.
He loves us all, and He certainly does not want any of us to be lost in the darkness. That is exactly the true essence and meaning of the Law, that is love, and namely love that is everlasting and not bound by the selfish love of oneself. The Law is love, because it teaches us firstly to love the Lord our God, by the giving of ourselves, of our hearts, minds and entire being to the One who loves us so much, that He was willing to send His own Son to save us from death.
And the Law also spoke of love that we need to show for one another, the care and concern, the compassion and love which we ought to show our brethren, so that in all the things we say, in all the things we commit and do, we may always show the love of God and practice the same to our fellow men. And yet, for a long time, by the time of Jesus, few understand this true significance and impact of the Law.
Instead, they misunderstood the Law as a tool to shore up their own vanity and selfishness, thinking that if they obeyed the Law and the Lord more according to what had been written, then they would be granted what they wanted. They pursued the Law and obeyed them to the letter, not because they loved the Lord or cared about Him and His ways. Instead, they obeyed the laws of Moses because they wanted to look and appear good before the people.
It was their ego which became their undoing, as in their hearts, greed, desire, arrogance and pride, and many other negative emotions were gathered together and bloomed up to form the ego and the vanity with which they showed their Lord just how wicked they were. They were serving their own interests, and when in their hearts and minds, they only saw their own glory among the people of God.
They observed the laws of the washing of hands before meal because they wanted to be seen as pious and righteous by the people. Just as on another occasion, Jesus also rebuked the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law because of their attitude in prayer, for they liked to gather in public places and marketplaces, praying loudly and with zealous appearances to gain the support and acclaim from the public.
But inside they were rotten and wicked. They had no consideration for the people they had been entrusted with. On the other hand, it was the poor and the weak, those who have nothing or little with them, the simple and the ones who lived righteously, who truly had the Lord in their hearts and in their minds. They lived righteously and in their actions, even though they were poor and lacking in worldly things, they did not lack the treasures which they have in God.
When Jesus spoke of the prayer as compared between a Pharisee and a tax collector in one of His parables, He was speaking of the reality of the situation and the contrast we have just discussed. The Pharisee prayed proudly and filled with hubris as well as self-praise about Himself, and he even looked down on the tax collector whom he branded a sinner and a filthy and unworthy person.
On the contrary, the tax collector humbled himself greatly before the Lord, fully aware of his sins and faults, and he offered repentance and true devotion, which came out of his heart, the desire to seek the Lord with all of one’s might. In the end, it is the prayer of the tax collector that God will hear and fulfil, as it was made from the heart, the outpouring of love and devotion which flows from the heart of a worthy and righteous man.
On the day of judgment, this tax collector, a sinner, will rank far higher than that of the Pharisee or the teacher of the Law, because although they were outwardly and externally seeming to be pious, but what truly matters to the Lord is not sacrifices and external faith or piety. While these are indeed important too, but without the correct internal orientation of one’s faith and devotion, all other things including the external devotions would mean nothing.
In one occasion, God made it clear to St. Peter, His Apostle, that His will is such that all things are to be considered clean and good. In a vision, He offered Peter animals of all kinds that by Jewish dietary laws and food prohibition laws are considered as unclean, and He asked him to eat them. Peter refused them saying that nothing impure and unclean had ever entered his mouth.
God replied him saying that what He had deemed to be clean, no man should mark as unclean. And this is alluding to both the dietary prohibitions, as well as bringing the faith to the Gentiles, whom the Jews up to then considered as pagan, unclean and unworthy of salvation. God had made all of mankind equal in the beginning, and no one had better standing than the other, based on their race, background or anything save their own actions.
Thus, it is truly absurd and folly to think that something from the outside such as food, or external matters such as race, origins and physical appearances made someone righteous, for these mean nothing if their insides, the heart and soul are filled with wickedness and lacking in God’s love and grace. Instead of focusing on externals as the Pharisees had done, we should first look deep inside ourselves.
Yes, look deep inside our hearts, discern and think, whether our every words and actions have been done in accordance with the will of God. For God had instructed us to be selfless, to love Him with all our might and to love one another equally as we love ourselves. Let us ponder on this, so that we will not fall into the same trap that befell the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who were trapped by their own ego and vanity.
May Almighty God be with us always, and help us to see beyond ourselves and our greedy desires. May all of us be closer to the Lord, and place His Law and love inside our hearts, so that by our understanding of the true purpose and meaning of His laws and precepts, we may be found righteous and just, and be made worthy of eternal life and salvation. God bless us all. Amen.
