August 26, 2026
Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 427
Reading 1
We instruct you, brothers and sisters,
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
to shun any brother
who walks in a disorderly way
and not according to the tradition they received from us.
For you know how one must imitate us.
For we did not act in a disorderly way among you,
nor did we eat food received free from anyone.
On the contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day we worked,
so as not to burden any of you.
Not that we do not have the right.
Rather, we wanted to present ourselves as a model for you,
so that you might imitate us.
In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that
if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.
May the Lord of peace himself
give you peace at all times and in every way.
The Lord be with all of you.
This greeting is in my own hand, Paul’s.
This is the sign in every letter; this is how I write.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (1) Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
blessed shall you be, and favored.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Behold, thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
The LORD bless you from Zion:
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever keeps the word of Christ,
the love of God is truly perfected in him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said,
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside,
but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.
Even so, on the outside you appear righteous,
but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You build the tombs of the prophets
and adorn the memorials of the righteous,
and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors,
we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets’ blood.’
Thus you bear witness against yourselves
that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets;
now fill up what your ancestors measured out!”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082626.cfm
Commentary on 2
Thessalonians 3:6-10,16-18
We have our final reading today from 2 Thessalonians—a short
work with only three chapters. The teaching is a warning against people who do
not work and do not pull their weight in the community.
It seems that this was partly related to the expectation of the
Lord’s imminent second coming among the very early Christians. They believed
that Jesus would return while they were still alive. As time passed, this
belief receded, and this is reflected in the later books of the New Testament.
If the end of the world was so near, what was the point in
killing oneself working? Paul (or the anonymous author of 2 Thessalonians) will
have none of that. Paul’s own behaviour is proposed as an example to follow.
Next to the question of the Second Coming, he pays more
attention to this related issue than anything else. It seems to have worsened
since the earlier letter to the Thessalonians. The Christians are even told to
keep away from, and to have nothing to do with, those who will not work. The
word Paul uses is strong, an authoritative word with a military ring about it.
This would not imply a complete separation from people who were in effect
brothers and sisters in Christ, but rather a total refusal to identify with
their behaviour. Idleness is sinful and disruptive, but those guilty of it are
still brothers. Such behaviour was not at all in accordance with the
“traditions” that had been handed on to them.
Instead, the Thessalonians are called on to imitate Paul, to
make him their model. The Jerusalem Bible comments:
By imitating Paul, Christians will be imitating Christ, who
is himself the one that Paul is imitating. Christians must also imitate God,
and they must imitate each other. Behind this community of life is the idea of
a model of doctrine, that has been received by tradition. The leaders who
transmit the doctrine must themselves be ‘models’, whose faith and life are to
be imitated. (edited)
The New International Version makes this
comment:
The order in Christian imitation is:
- Believers
in Macedonia and Achaia imitated the Thessalonians, just as the
Thessalonians imitated the churches in Judea;
- The
Thessalonians imitated Paul, just as the Corinthians did and just as all
believers were to imitate their leaders;
- Paul
imitated Christ as did the Thessalonians;
- All
were to imitate God. (edited)
In case of any misunderstanding, Paul spells out just what
he means. Whenever he was with the Thessalonians, he always worked to support
himself, and even paid for the food that he was offered. To “eat…bread” is a
Hebraic term for ‘making a living’. Paul, of course, does not say he never
accepted hospitality (in fact, he says below that it is the missionary’s
right), but that he did not depend on others for his general living. He and his
companions worked hard “with toil and labor” so as not to be a burden on any
community. (We know from elsewhere that Paul was a tent-maker.) They did this,
not because they had no right to expect some material support from those to
whom they were preaching, but because they wanted to set a good example which
they expected the Thessalonians to follow.
It is another example of Paul’s setting aside a principle—in
this case, the community’s duty to support the missionary—for something he
believed was more important: that each one pull their weight in the community.
(Another example is his refraining from eating certain foods which the
scrupulous might regard as ‘unclean’ or in having Timothy, who had a Jewish
mother and a Gentile father, circumcised, even though he himself did not
believe in the necessity of circumcision.)
Paul had even laid down a ruling with them that food was not
to be given to those who refused to work. There was apparently a secular
proverb in the form, “He who does not work does not eat”. Paul sets it down as
a rule to be followed in the community. He clearly had no time for spongers and
social parasites, however exalted their motives.
The reading ends with the final blessing of the letter, a
prayer of blessing for peace “at all times in all ways”. He then signs off in
his own handwriting. Although he normally dictated his letters (there are hints
his sight was poor—was this the “thorn…in the flesh” he speaks about in 2 Cor
12:7-10?), he sometimes added a handwritten signature as a sign of the letter’s
genuineness. Here he tells us that this practice was his distinguishing mark.
And although he had had words of criticisms for his readers, he concludes with
a typical prayer that the loving grace of the Lord Jesus be with them all.
We could perhaps reflect today on our attitudes towards
work. On the one hand, there are the ‘workaholics’, those who are compulsive
workers, irrespective of the need to do what they are doing, or of the rewards
it produces. There are others who work very hard simply to earn more and more,
often way beyond the needs of a modestly decent standard of living. In both
cases, other personal, family and social needs are neglected and the
individual, as a result, can suffer. Paul clearly would not approve of this.
On the other hand, there are those who have a strong
aversion to work and who will do all they can to live off others, whether that
be their family, friends or the state. Paul would not approve of them either.
There are others who work hard and make significant
contributions to society, but whose work cannot always be quantified in
monetary or economic terms. Two obvious examples are the full-time parent or
the adult caregiver of an aging relative. As well, many of those who work for
churches or social service organisations serve as volunteers or agree to accept
a token salary. They certainly deserve that their needs (not necessarily all
their ‘wants’) be provided by the parish or diocesan community. Surely Paul
would give his approval here.
So I need to look at my life and see whether, given my
various resources, I make an appropriate contribution to my society:
- Do I
work too much?
- Do I
work enough?
- Do I
work as a service to others? Is that how I see the job or profession I am
in?
- Do I
work only for the material reward?
- Am I
sufficiently and appropriately remunerated for the work I do?
Commentary on
Matthew 23:27-32
We come today to the last two of the seven ‘Woes’ which
Jesus throws against Pharisaism. Again it is an attack on hypocrisy and
he gives two examples:
6. …you are like whitewashed tombs… (vv
27-28)
On the one hand he compares the Pharisees to “whited
sepulchres” (“whitewashed tombs” in the NRSVue translation), a phrase (like
many others) that has found its way into everyday English through the King James
version of the Bible. In other words, they are like the tombs that people
in Palestine could often see spotlessly clean in their whitewashed stones, but
which inside were full of the decaying and rotting bodies of the dead.
One reason they were whitewashed was because a person who
unwittingly stepped on a grave became ritually unclean. Whitewashing made
them more visible, especially in the dark. The Pharisees put on an external
show of religious perfection down to the tiniest detail, but inside, their hearts
and minds were full of pride and hatred and contempt for their fellow
man. It was epitomised in the story that Jesus told of the Pharisee and
the tax collector who went to the Temple to pray. The sanctimonious
prayer of the Pharisee was:
God, I thank you that I am not like other people:
thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
(Luke 18:11)
It was, of course, to some extent true, but it closed his
mind to a different kind of sin altogether—his pride and imagined
self-sufficiency. As Jesus will say in another place, the greatest sin of
the pharisaical is their sheer blindness, the inability to see themselves for
what they really are. This, I suppose, is the most dangerous sin of the pious
in any age, and yet the one least likely to be confessed and repented. And it
can happen to any of us.
7. …you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate
the graves of the righteous… (vv 29-32)
On the other hand, mention of tombs leads Jesus to comment
on the Pharisees’ pride over the tombs they have built in memory of the
prophets and other holy people. They congratulate themselves that, if they had
been present, they would never have partaken in the actions which brought
persecution and death to the prophets. Yet here is Jesus, the prophet of
all prophets, whom they are preparing to kill.
In the last verse of our reading, Jesus tells them to go
ahead and complete the murdering of the prophets, referring to what is going to
happen to himself. This is another classic example of the blindness of
the self-righteous. The more committed we are to our Christian faith and to the
behaviour that it expects, the greater the danger that we, too, can fall into
the same trap and see ourselves on a higher level than others whose behaviour
we deplore and perhaps even attack.
Whole groups of such people have been appearing in recent
years, people who claim to know the Church better than the Pope, who still
deplore the ‘heresies’ of the Second Vatican Council, or who close themselves
off into elitist groups afraid of being contaminated not only by the ‘world’,
but even by other Catholics!
https://sacredspace.com/commentary
Wednesday,
August 26, 2026
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Father, help us to seek the
values that will bring us enduring joy in this changing world.
In our desire for what you promise make us one in mind and
heart.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Matthew 23: 27-32
Jesus said:
'Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed
tombs that look handsome on the outside but inside are full of the bones of the
dead and every kind of corruption. In just the same way, from the outside you
look upright, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. 'Alas for
you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build the sepulchres of the
prophets and decorate the tombs of the upright, saying, "We would never
have joined in shedding the blood of the prophets, had we lived in our ancestors'
day." So! Your own evidence tells against you! You are the children of
those who murdered the prophets! Very well then, finish off the work that your
ancestors began.
Reflection
These two last ‘Alas for you ...’
which Jesus pronounced against the doctors of the law and the Pharisees of his
time, take again and strengthen, the same theme of the two ‘Alas for you ...’
of the Gospel of yesterday. Jesus criticizes the lack of coherence between the
word and the practice, between what is interior and what is exterior.
•
Matthew 23: 27-28: The seventh, ‘Alas for you
...” against those who are like whitewashed tombs. You appear upright on the
outside, but inside you are
full of hypocrisy and lawlessness”.
The image of “whitewashed sepulchers” speaks for itself and needs no
commentaries. Jesus condemns those who have the fictitious appearance of
upright persons, but who interiorly are the total negation of what they want to
appear outside.
•
Matthew 23: 29-32: The eighth ‘Alas for you...’
against those who build the sepulchers of the prophets and decorate the tombs
of the upright, but do not imitate them. The doctors and the Pharisees said:
“We would never have joined in shedding the blood of the prophets, had we lived
in our ancestors’ day”. And Jesus concludes saying: The persons who speak like
this “confess that they are children of those who killed the prophets”, then
they say “Our fathers”. And Jesus ends saying:” Very well then, finish off the
work that your ancestors began!” In fact, at that moment they had already
decided to kill Jesus. In this way they were finishing off the work of their
ancestors.
Personal Questions
•
Still two other expressions, ‘Alas for you...’ but
two reasons for being criticized severely by Jesus. Which of these is in me?
•
Which image of myself do I try to present to
others? Does it correspond, in fact, to what I am before God?
Concluding Prayer
How blessed are all who fear Yahweh, who walk in his ways!
Your own labors will yield you a living, happy and prosperous
will you be. (Ps 128: 1-2)
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