DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Then Jesus continued, “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God; it is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others. – Luke 11: 42

Among the woes Christ lists about the Pharisees’ version of living the holy life is this concern … You make such a fuss about the rules for tithing … yet, you neglect the far more important matters of treating others justly and expressing the Love of God.

Even today in the guise of crusade for the cause or moral indignation over this or that … we neglect in the blindness and narrow focus of such zealotry the far more important matters of treating others justly and expressing the Love of God.  It is the sin of the sanctimonious, the spiritually unbalanced, and the indoctrinated.  It is a sin of greater weight for it is done in the name of God.

So often, over and over again throughout Christian history, Christians we ourselves become sinful in the ridding the world of the sin in other people.  When we ought to have been confessing and repenting, we instead went about condemning with supposedly holy wrath.  And the more passionate our zealous cause, the more and more we neglect the quality of spirit found in the humbly just and the mercifully loving.

Woe to the Pharisees and woe to those fall into the delusional holiness of the Pharisees.

Focus on the matters of universal justice and Divine Love.

Always in Chris’s Service,

Fr. Charitas de la Cruz