The pharisaism which Jesus condemns in today’s Gospel (Matt 23:13-22) is a danger for religious people. The Pharisees, like many religious people of good will, are concerned with following the commandments–which is a good thing. Yet the Pharisees live and act as if the commandments were what justify them in the eyes of God, and so in their strict adherence to the commandments they fall into self-righteousness and hypocrisy. Saint Paul, of course, who was himself a Pharisee, came to understand this problem through his encounter with Christ, and so he says to the Galatians that “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (2:16). Or as Pope Francis stated in a recent Wednesday audience, “The Commandments exist, but they do not justify us. What makes us just is Jesus Christ. The Commandments must be observed, but they do not give us justice; there is the gratuitousness of Jesus Christ, the encounter with Jesus Christ that freely justifies us.” The Pharisees’ mistake—which we can make, too—is that they fixate on the Law instead of looking to the person of Jesus himself.
Today’s Gospel is an invitation for us to examine our own relationship to the commandments and the precepts of the Church. Again, as Pope Francis invites us to ask, “How do I live? In the fear that if I do not do this, I will go to hell? Or do I live with that hope too, with that joy of the gratuitousness of salvation in Jesus Christ? . . . And also the second: do I disregard the Commandments? No. I observe them, but not as absolutes, because I know that it is Jesus Christ who justifies me.” Let us pray again for that grace of faith that enables us to put our trust in Jesus rather than our own efforts or righteousness.