August 27, 2025
Memorial of Saint Monica
Lectionary: 427
Reading 1
You recall, brothers and sisters, our toil and drudgery.
Working night and day in order not to burden any of you,
we proclaimed to you the Gospel of God.
You are witnesses, and so is God,
how devoutly and justly and blamelessly
we behaved toward you believers.
As you know, we treated each one of you as a father treats his children,
exhorting and encouraging you and insisting
that you walk in a manner worthy of the God
who calls you into his Kingdom and glory.
And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly,
that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us,
you received it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God,
which is now at work in you who believe.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (1) You have searched me and you know me, Lord.
Where can I go from your spirit?
From your presence where can I flee?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I sink to the nether world, you are present there.
R. You have searched me and you know me, Lord.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Even there your hand shall guide me,
and your right hand hold me fast.
R. You have searched me and you know me, Lord.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall hide me,
and night shall be my light"–
For you darkness itself is not dark,
and night shines as the day.
R. You have searched me and you know me, 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/082725.cfm
Commentary on 1
Thessalonians 2:9-13
Paul defends his behaviour with the Thessalonians where he
had been treated very badly by a group of people. He reminds them of how he and
his fellow evangelisers used to work night and day so as not to be a burden on
them while they preached the gospel among them.
We know that, wherever he could, Paul supported himself and
was not ashamed to be known by his trade—a tentmaker. As he said in
yesterday’s reading, he never insisted on what he believed were his rights as
an evangeliser. The Greeks tended to despise manual labour and viewed it
as fit only for slaves, but Paul was not ashamed of doing any sort of work that
would help further the gospel. He never wanted to be unnecessarily
dependent on others.
The Thessalonians themselves have seen—as has God
himself—how Paul’s behaviour among them has always been impeccable and
upright. Paul never hesitates to admit his weaknesses, but he also is not
afraid to speak of his strengths and he does here (see also his strong
self-defence in 2 Corinthians). He and his companions always treated the
Thessalonians as a father would his children, urging them, encouraging them,
and appealing to them to live a life worthy of the God who calls them to share
his Kingdom and his glory. He is proud of the example he has set to
others. It was a work combining both dedication and affection.
In calling them to share God’s Kingdom he is true to the
core of Jesus’ teaching. ‘Kingdom’ is not a term Paul uses very often,
but he did use it once to sum up the message of his teaching. This was
during his address of farewell to the elders at Ephesus:
And now I know that none of you, among whom I have gone
about proclaiming the kingdom, will ever see my face again. (Acts
20:25)
Now Paul continually thanks God for them, because as soon as
they heard the word which Paul brought them as God’s message, they welcomed it
for what it was—not the word of a mere human being (Paul), but God’s own word,
a power that is now working among them as believers.
This perception has enabled them to be steadfast in the face
of opposition. We have here, too, a brief summary of the apostolic tradition:
the message is first ‘received’, or ‘heard’. It then penetrates the mind
or heart, where it is welcomed, and proves that the hearer acknowledges God has
been speaking through his missionary.
In all our Christian living we, too, need to be aware that
our greatest impact is made not just by the words we speak, but also by the
example of our lives—by the love and care and compassion that we show.
And the real test of our Christian witness is not that people say how holy we
are, but that they themselves are led to God.
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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!
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o1214g/
Wednesday,
August 27, 2025
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, "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!"
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 word and 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 to be.
•
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.” Jesus concludes saying: The
people who speak like this “confess that they are children of those who killed
the prophets then they say “our fathers.” Jesus ends by 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
•
These two other expressions of "Alas for
you..." are 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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