—Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written:
This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.
You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.—
Who are the Pharisees? Are they just the Jewish legalists that Jesus encountered? Are there Pharisees walking the earth today? Are there Pharisees who call themselves Catholic?
God has certainly laid down the Law for us. He commands us to observe the Law, to observe all of the statutes and decrees He has made. Moses put it very plainly:
—Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe…
In your observance of the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin upon you, you shall not add to what I command you nor subtract from it.
Observe God’s commands and do not make more of them. Observe God’s commands and do not denigrate them.
St. James reminds us of Jesus’ words. Recall that Jesus told those questioning Him about the Law of God that Moses passed on to them:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.
St. James reiterates that when he says:
All good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change.
What the Father has handed down throughout history is the truth. There is no alteration, change, or shadow of meaning in God’s truth.
Jesus is God and He did not modify His commands; He clarified them and He forces us to face them honestly.
The Pharisees Jesus encountered didn’t get what Moses told them. They altered the Law and made the Law fit their style. They added many of their own humanly devised rules and regulations to God’s law, which had the effect of misrepresenting and misapplying His Law. They were not legalists; they were corrupters of God’s Law, misusing it in ways God never intended.
It is not legalistic to obey God’s laws correctly. Obeying God’s Law is acting in spirit and truth. Jesus told us that:
The hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.
God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.”
The questions before us then are these: Do we worship God in spirit and truth? Do we corrupt what Jesus has given us? Are we the Pharisees of today?
As Catholic Christians we have the most beautiful of gifts, authentic Catholic worship of God. Moreover, we have the gift of the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church, the true and faithful Traditions of Christendom as handed down to us by the Holy Church.
We are the richest people on earth, not in buildings, or gold, or personal possessions, but in what we truly and commonly possess, the faith of the Holy Church. We have before us a treasure more precious than the entirety of the universe in its splendor; we have Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity right here on this altar and in this tabernacle.
We have the immemorial festival we celebrate here, the great sacrifice and the great feast. We honor God not just with our lips, but with the entirely of our being. Would you rather be anyplace else?
The Pharisees out there see our worship of God and want to change it.
They need to fit the worship of God into their schedule and style. The Holy Mass needs to be jazzier, more modern, relevant, appealing, entertaining, or more contemporary. ‘I need to get more out of the mass.’ Others may say that the Holy Mass needs to be more ‘traditional’, but only according to their own personal recollection of tradition.
Individual tastes appeal to the individual, but we are not here for that. We are not here for a makeover or a re-do of our common worship. That would be a corruption of God’s gift. That would make us Pharisees.
We are here as a community to worship God only, worshiping in accord with the Church’s teaching and tradition as given to us by Jesus Christ and His apostles. We are here to set ourselves aside, to minimize ourselves, and to acknowledge the One who is preeminent.
How we worship God is not a matter of “personal taste.” Rather it is a total focusing of ourselves and of the whole community on being “God centered.”
We must offer our worship —in Spirit and Truth” and we must do our all to be “well pleasing unto God.” He is the only One we strive to “please” by our worship and by the way we live. We are to assure that our hearts and our lips have one focus only —“ God.
Jesus continually reminds us that it is easy to be a Pharisee and a hypocrite. That is the wide and easy path. Anyone can create church in their own image; the thousands of allegedly Christian sects out there prove that.
Jesus reminds us not only in His words, but in His very actions, including His self sacrifice on the cross; we need to repent of our self-centeredness and become “God centered.” We need to set aside our personal ideas and styles and be molded into the men and women God wants us to be.
Jesus prayed in the garden:
“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.”
And again
“My Father, if it is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done!”
Everything we do, our worship, our day-to-day lives, our business dealings, the way we relate to each other, can be an indicator of the Pharisee within us, God’s law according to me.
With Jesus’ help and the Church’s teaching we are to set that Pharisee aside and pray every minute of every day, “Your will be done.”
Focus yourselves on God and His will. Worship Him in spirit and truth. Keep your hearts and your lips of one accord.