Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil

March 18, 2023

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

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The following text guided the short homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us as we mark the Fourth Sunday of Lent. In the Gospel, Jesus will cure a man blind from birth, but he works this miracle far differently from the many other times he cured those who had no sight. In the other cases, the blind men asked, in fact, cried out, begging for help. This Sunday, the blind man doesn’t say a thing. He’s just there, along the road, and becomes the object of a theological question from the disciples about the cause of his blindness. Jesus stated that the reason he was was blind from birth was to allow God’s works to show through him; his whole life in darkness until that point was so that he could encounter the saving power of Jesus and from that moment onward be a tremendously conspicuous example of God’s own light shining brightly through him. That truth influences the way Jesus performs this miracle, because Jesus had two healings in mind — first a physical one for him and then a spiritual one for him and for us all.

* The Lord Jesus first spits on the ground, makes mud with his saliva, and then goes up unbidden to the blind man and smears his eyes with mud. The blind man could have easily thought that someone was making fun of and abusing him, as probably happened often. But the Lord is not done. Jesus then tells him to go to wash in the pool of Siloam. The blind man could have reckoned, “What a stupid and pointless hassle! Wipe mud on my eyes and then send me, who can’t see, to wash in a pool, where I can easily fall in and drown.” Jesus, however, must have given that command in a way that inspired trust. By the man’s willingness to carry out this simple imperative Jesus gives him, the man embarks, without knowing it, on the great adventure of faith, on the exciting journey from darkness into light. Jesus allows this man, unlike the other blind men he cured — and this is the second difference from the other cures Jesus worked — to participate actively in his own healing, so that through the process, he might receive not just the ability to see the physical light of the world but also a much deeper light, the light of faith in Jesus, the true light of the world.

* Three-and-a-half weeks ago, Jesus did to us something similar to what he did to the man born blind in this Sunday’s Gospel. Someone acting in His Name smudged our foreheads not with muddy saliva but moistened ashes, and gave us a two-part command, the very same directive with which Jesus began His whole public ministry, “Repent and believe in the Gospel!” This was Jesus’ way for us to participate in our own healing during this blessed time of Lent, in our own coming from the darkness into his light, in our own exodus from sin to love, in our own Passover from death to life. We might have been tempted to consider this more or less an empty rite, something merely symbolic, but Jesus wanted to work in us during this time a true miracle of healing, through our participation and trust in this two-part therapeutic process.

* The first part of the cure of our blindness begins with repenting, which means turning away from the life of sin that blinds us. Sin darkens the intellect and distorts the will so that often we can no longer even see the good clearly or easily choose it when we do.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Feast of St. Patrick

Readings from the Friday of the Third Week of Lent

March 17, 2023

Hos 14:2-10, Ps 81, Mk 12:28-34

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, God made a special appeal to each of us through the Prophet Joel: “Return to me with your whole heart.” He asked us to “rend our hearts,” to rip them open to receive his merciful love and to share his compassion with others, a summons that not only should influence the way we read today’s Gospel, but is also at the heart of this second phase of Lent — from the 3rd Sunday through the end of the 4th week — when we ponder the meaning of baptism for the Elect preparing for Baptism as well as for all of us who need to grow in living the consequences of our baptism. We can interpret today’s reading in a baptismal key, for this is one of the most commonly chosen readings for the celebration of baptism, since it shows us what the purpose of a Christian life is and how we can keep our end of the baptismal Covenant with the Lord. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus responds, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’” Today Jesus reminds us that the whole point of the Lenten season, the whole point of the Christian life to which Lent is meant to restore us, is to return with our whole heart in love to God, and not just our heart, but to return to him with our whole soul, mind and strength as well, to receive his merciful love without any obstacles and then to learn how to let that mercy we’ve received become the way which we respond to others.

* It’s important that we truly confront what Jesus is asking of us. There are many Christians who believe they love the Lord simply because they have good thoughts about him, they admire him, they think that he’s kind, merciful and generous. But Jesus is calling for much more than this. Love is more than having good feelings or impressions about another; love is the unconquerable benevolence that leads to willing, to choosing consistently, the good of the other for the other’s sake. Love is opting as a habit to sacrifice oneself for another, putting someone else ahead of us, like Jesus would say during the Last Supper and put into action the following afternoon: laying down one’s life for one’s friends, in little ways or supremely. There are many Christians who love God to the point of sacrificing for him, but as today’s Gospel shows us, it’s not enough to sacrifice some of the time and gifts that he’s given us for him and his glory. It’s not enough to give God some of our mind, heart, soul and strength. Jesus is calling us to love God with all we’ve got. Today he says that that’s worth more than all sacrifices. To get to that type of love requires a deep conversion on our part. It means that our hope is not just to be good people but to be really holy people.

* We should make this practical. We need to examine how we use our mind to love the Lord, to seek to think as he thinks, to fill our minds with his thoughts through prayer and reading the Bible and good spiritual books. We need to look at whether we love him with all our heart, loving him more than everything and everyone else in our life, including our life. We need to question whether we’re loving him with 100 percent of our strength,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Leonine Forum, IESE Business School, Manhattan

Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

March 16, 2023

Jer 7:23-28, Ps 95, Lk 11:14-23

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.16.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Lent is about our conversion, repenting and turning away from sin, believing in the Gospel and turning toward Christ, and then, with faith, turning with Christ full-time. In today’s first reading, we see how the Israelites of Jeremiah’s age responded to the call to conversion. The Lord himself summarizes it through the Prophet Jeremiah at the beginning of today’s first reading: “This is what I commanded my people: Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper. But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed.” Then he uses four body parts to describe graphically their response. “They turned their backs, not their faces, to me.” This was a sign of betrayal and abandonment. “They have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers.” They wouldn’t heed the Lord when he sent the prophets toward them; they would resolutely keep doing what they wanted to do like horses running with blinders. “They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts.” Their hearts, which were meant to be sponges for God’s words, had become sclerotic, impenetrable even to God. We’re called to love the Lord with all our mind, soul, and strength, which means with our backs, faces, necks, hearts and all we are and have. We’re called to turn with him fully.

* We see an illustration of the type of resistance we’ve saw in Jeremiah’s contemporaries in Jesus’ contemporaries in the Gospel. Jesus had just exorcised a boy, one in a long line of deliverances from the devil, but those Scribes and Pharisees who had already hardened their hearts, stiffened their necks and turned their backs rather than their faces toward Jesus refused to accept that any of the incontestable exorcisms happened by the finger of God. They accused Jesus of working exorcisms by the power of the prince of devils. Their hardened hearts had led to a hardening of the brain. Jesus exposes their foolishness in two ways. First, since they admitted that some of their own number were exorcising, if he cast out by the devil, then they were suggesting that their own number might be exorcising by Beelzebul, too, something of course they would never believe or admit. Second, since the devil is trying to win, not forfeit, the possession our hearts, backs, necks and faces, it would make no sense for him to be defeating himself through exorcism. Their response to Jesus’ liberation of the boy from the devil, however, shows what God was describing about the Israelites and their treatment of the prophets sent in God’s name. They didn’t want to turn back to God. No matter how often they had prayed today’s Responsorial Psalm, “If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts,” that’s precisely what they did when they heard the voice of God through Jeremiah, and it’s precisely what the Scribes and Pharisees did when they heard Jesus’ voice.

* If we want to prevent what happened to believers in both generations from happening to us, we need to hearken to the voice of the Lord. Rather than turning our backs toward Him, we need to turn our faces in prayer and in adoration. Rather than hardening our hearts, we need to soften them, by responding to his merciful help to love more and more all that he teaches us, listening to his words as words to be done, and then helping others to receive and live by this same gift of mercy.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

2023 Diocese of Fall River Women’s and Men’s Conference

“Receive Jesus. Worship Jesus.”

Stonehill College Ames Sports Complex

March 11, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of today’s talk, please click below: 

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Receiving, Worship, Imitating and Sharing Jesus

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil

March 11, 2023

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.11.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the short homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us tomorrow on the Third Sunday of Lent.

* The Church has us focus on the life-changing conversation Jesus has with a Samaritan woman at a well. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, promised that he would leave all of his other sheep behind and go in search of whichever sheep of his was lost. This Sunday we see him putting that truth into action, in his encounter with the Liz Taylor of her day, who had married five times already and was then living with a sixth man who was not her husband. She was a symbol of what had happened to her Samaritan people, which had intermarried with five succeeding invading nations and began to worship their gods, but now were pretending to worship the one true God, but doing so not according to the Covenant but on their own mountain. The woman’s behavior had led to her being ostracized, as was evidenced by her going alone to draw water at the well at high noon, at the height of the piercing sun, when no one else for obvious reasons would have been there. Had she gone at cooler times in the early morning or late afternoon, she would have been the butt of criticism from other women for her past and present. Jesus went to await her at the most brutal moment of the day. In his conversation with her, not only did he break two social conventions — that Jews never spoke to Samaritans and that men never spoke to unrelated women alone — but most importantly he taught her and through her us about the two essential realities about our spiritual life: God’s grace, symbolized by the “living water” he describes, and our desire or “thirst” for that water.

* Upon the Cross, Jesus said, “I thirst,” and his whole life was an insatiable quest to give us that spring of living water gushing up within us to eternal life. Just like our body cannot exist without water — the human body is in fact 72 percent water — neither can our soul survive without this living water. Jesus, through whom both our body and soul were created, knows both realities, and came as the divine physician to give the needed soul-sustaining remedy to the woman at the well and to each of us.

* What exactly is this “living water”? It is nothing short of God’s divine life — what we call in theology the Indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. The reference to water is an obviously link to Baptism with the gift of spiritual filiation that it brings, but the connection does not stop there. In one part of the Gospel, Jesus identifies the living water as the presence of the Holy Spirit; in another, he identifies it as his own presence through the holy Eucharist. The living water refers to all of these realities, the presence of God in the soul as a result of the Sacraments. Jesus wants to give us this living water of divine filiation, of the Holy Spirit, of his life-giving flesh and blood, of the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. But his will is not enough. He placed a condition on his own omnipotence; he can lead us to the living water but won’t force us to drink. He wants us freely to ask for it, to desire We see this very clearly in his invitation to the woman at the well: “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” And the woman used her freedom to say, “Sir,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of the Second Week of Lent

March 10, 2023

Gen 37:3-4.12-13.17-18, Ps 105, Mt 21:33-43.45-46

 

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.10.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today in the readings we focus on one of the most difficult experiences of human life: rejection. We ponder the rejection of the young patriarch Joseph by his family members and of Jesus by his creatures. It’s an occasion for us to ponder the many times in our lives we, too, have been rejected, especially those occasions that may sting the most. But in response to the terrible rejections of Joseph and Jesus, the Responsorial Psalm has us proclaim today, repeatedly, “Remember the marvels the Lord has done!” In the Gospel, Jesus, citing Psalm 118, says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. By the Lord has this been done; it is wonderful in our eyes!” (Ps 118:22-23). The verse right after that is the essential verse of Easter, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad.” To prepare ourselves in Lent for Easter, we must enter more deeply into the experience of the rejection we see through sin, of the envy that causes it, and how God not only seeks — marvelously! — to take away our sins and forgive them but to make them part of our salvation.

* In the first reading from the Book of Genesis, we see how Joseph’s brothers were envious of him because he was their father Jacob’s favorite. The fact that Jacob loved Joseph the most didn’t mean he didn’t love the other brothers, but their envy led them not only to close themselves to the love their father had for them but also to the love they should have for their father and their brother. Their envy led them, as Genesis tells us, to “hate [Joseph] so much that they would not even greet him” and that interior poison led them much further. When Joseph went out to help his brothers tend the flocks in Dothan, the brothers conspired to plan to murder him and toss his dead body into a cistern and then lie about it to their father by saying a wild beast had devoured him. They wanted to replicate Cain’s invidious murder of his brother Abel. To save Joseph’s life, one of the brothers, Reuben, persuaded the others just to abandon him into an empty cistern so that he might be able to rescue him later. And so they agreed and threw him down into an inescapable situation, with most of the brothers likely thinking that, while they themselves didn’t shed his blood, it would just be a longer dying process. But then they saw a group of Ishmaelites, basically their second cousins through their grandfather Isaac’s half-brother Ishmael, and sold him into slavery for 20 pieces of silver, not as an act of mercy but of simple profiteering from what they anticipated would be a situation tantamount to his death in Egypt. At every stage, their envy at Joseph’s good fortune led to evil. Their brotherly betrayal was a prophetic type of what would eventually happen to Jesus when he would be sold by one of his spiritual brothers, one of his closest friends, for silver, too.

* Jesus describes that betrayal, and the envy that led to it, in today’s Gospel. Jesus spoke to the chief priests and the scribes in a parable about the way they had treated all the messengers God had sent them and how they were going to treat him. In the prophets Israel had often been referred to as a vineyard planted by God. God had made the Israelites stewards of that vineyard but expected a harvest when vintage time grew near. The prophets were the ones sent to remind them of that yield of good deeds, but, as Jesus said,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

Memorial of St. Frances of Rome

March 9, 2023

Jer 17:5-10, Ps 1, Lk 16:19-31

 

To listen to today’s homily, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.9.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* We’ve been talking since the beginning of Lent about how this holy season is supposed to make us more like God: that prayer is meant to help us begin to think as God thinks and to treasure and become more like him whom we adore; that fasting is meant to help us to hunger for what God hungers; that almsgiving is supposed to help us participate in God’s providential care for others. The mercy we show for others is really the fruit of all three practices: the fruit of prayer is charity; what God hungers for is, as we heard on in Isaiah on the third day of Lent, for us to share our bread with the hungry, to shelter the oppressed and the homeless, to clothe the naked when we see them, not to turn our back on our own family members and kin in need, to release those bound unjustly and break the yoke that keeps people oppressed; and almsgiving doesn’t concern simply good deeds done for the poor and needy, but the tree that produces that fruit: The word almsgiving comes from the old English aelmesse, which is derived from the Greek eleemosyna, which is the word for mercy, as in Kyrie eleison, “Lord, have mercy.” The Latin is misericors, literally a “heart for the poor.” Almsgiving flows from a merciful heart, a heart like God’s.

* It’s not enough for us as Christians simply not to do evil to others. We also are called positively to do good, to sacrifice ourselves for others, to go out in search for those in need, to give not only things but ourselves to those in greater need. Jesus wants us — and wants to help us — to love one another as he has loved us first, to become Good Samaritans to others just like he crossed the road all the way from heaven to care for us, not just not harming us but positively helping us. Yesterday he told us that the way to become great, the ambition he wants us to have, is to aspire to become the servant of the rest and to give our life to save others’ lives. Lent is a time for us to examine whether we are in fact bearing fruit from a heart full of compassion. It’s the time for us to beg God for what we asked at the beginning of today’s Mass, to “direct the hearts of your servants to yourself, that, caught up in the fire of your Spirit, we may be found steadfast in faith and effective in works.”

* In the Gospel today, Jesus gives us one of his most powerful parables in which he illustrates to us that it’s not enough just not to harm our neighbor. He wants us to love our neighbor, to give of ourselves for our neighbors in need. The Rich Man in the Parable goes to hell not because he did any evil to the poor man, Lazarus, wounded and starving to death at his gate. He didn’t insult him. He didn’t beat him. He didn’t send dogs to attack him. The Rich Man was sent to hell because when he saw Lazarus at his gate he simply did nothing. He continued to eat his three sumptuous meals a day while Lazarus was dying of starvation and lack of care. Even the pets recognized his suffering such that the dogs were licking his wounds to try to heal them, but the Rich Man had no such compassion.

* The parable illustrates very clearly the Rich Man’s sins of omission and it gets us to ask courageously and sincerely whether we’re committing similar sins. Jesus says that at the end of time, those who with great pain and regret he will wave to his eternal left, will be those who did nothing when they saw people hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill or in prison (Mt 25:31-46).

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent

Memorial of Saint John of God

March 8, 2023

Jer 18:18-20, Ps 31, Mt 20:17-28

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.8.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* The entire season of Lent is a commentary on what Jesus announced to us on Ash Wednesday. It’s an occasion to turn away from sin and turn to Him who is the Gospel in such a way that we seek and begin to turn with him constantly, which is what it means to “con-vert.” That conversion to which we’re summoned does not stop at external behaviors, rending our garments, but at our desires, what the Prophet Joel calls rending our hearts. In today’s readings we see how are deepest desires, our most profound ambitions, are meant to be transformed. In the Gospel yesterday, Jesus told us, “The greatest among you must be your servant,” and Jesus today reiterates that point saying, “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave,” and says that this is at its deepest level a reiteration of his common command, “Follow me,” because “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

* Lent is the period for the transformation of our ambitions, so that we will turn more and more with Jesus’ ambition. The three Lenten practices are all meant to help us: prayer helps us to look at things from God’s perspective, fasting to help us hunger for God and for what he hungers, almsgiving to help us to put others’ needs ahead of our own personal desires. Jesus wants to help us transform our ambitions by uniting us to his own prayer, fasting and almsgiving. It’s important for us to note that he doesn’t seek to eliminate all ambition. For him, ambition, desire, hunger itself is not a sin. But he wants us to be desirous of the right things, to revolutionize what great things we seek. There’s a pacific ocean between ambition for self-aggrandizement, which is the typical ambition in the world, and ambition for souls, between seeking to glorify one’s name and establish one’s kingdom versus trying to hallow God’s Name and enter and establish his Kingdom. Today in the Gospel Jesus seeks to make holy the ambition not just of James and John and their mother, not just of the apostles, but all of us. And in the process, he teaches us an important lesson about the way he purifies us of false ambition so that we may be more like him.

* We see just how much the apostles’ and their family members’ ambitions need to be transformed in St. Matthew’s account. As soon as Jesus gives the third prediction of his upcoming betrayal, condemnation, mockery, scourging and crucifixion, rather than consoling him, the apostles and John’s and James’ mom show their spiritually worldly ambitions. In fact, every time Jesus predicted his passion it seemed to bring out the worst, rather than the best, in his followers. We remember the first time he announced it, Peter, thinking not as God does but as human beings do and playing the part of Satan, “rebuked” him, saying “no such thing should ever happen to you.” The second time Jesus gave the same prediction and everyone just remained silent, thinking about their own situation, and then speaking along the way about the one who would be the greatest. But it gets worse today. As soon as he says the words about his crucifixion, the mother of James and John approached Jesus with her sons — because they were too afraid to ask on their own, it seems — and petitioned that they sit on his right and his left as his two chief advisors when he entered into...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Parish, Washington, DC

Parish Day of Recollection: “Extraordinary Help for a Holy Lent: The Eucharistic Revival and Jesus’ Call to Pray, Fast and Give Alms”

March 3-4, 2023

(There was a problem with the recorder and hence there’s a little static on the recording).

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.4.23_Eucharistic_Apostolate_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent

Memorial of SS. Perpetua and Felicity, Martyrs

March 7, 2023

Is 1:10.16-20, Ps 50, Mt 23:1-12

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.7.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Ash Wednesday each year, Jesus gives us the program for Lent and life when he announces “Repent and Believe,” or “Turn away from sin and believe in the Gospel.” There are two moments that he describes: the first stage of conversion is averting from everything unfit from God — from a bad life, from sin, from evil. The second stage is adverting, turning toward God, and then converting, turning with God, through putting our faith into practice. In today’s opening prayer we asked for this, as we asked the Lord in his “unceasing mercy” and “constant help” to keep us “from all harm”—  and no harm is greater than separating ourselves from God’s love and fraternal love through sin — and be “directed to all that brings salvation,” which is what real practical faith in the Gospel brings us. In today’s readings we also see both moments portrayed very clearly.

* At the beginning of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God through his emissary calls the Jews “Sodom” and “Gomorrah” to highlight the severity of their sins, because those are the most notoriously iniquitous cities of all time. Throughout Isaiah we see what those sins were. God speaks of their “misdeeds,” their “doing evil,” their “scarlet” and “crimson red” sins. “Wash yourselves clean!,” Isaiah cries out. In the Responsorial Psalm, God points out the hypocrisy of his people, saying, “Why do you recite my statutes and profess my covenant with your mouth” as “you hate discipline and cast my words behind you?” In the Gospel, Jesus begins a searing 35-verse call to repentance not only for the Scribes and Pharisees but for all of us who, like them — and in contrast to the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah who previously gloried in their debaucheries — can be tempted to appear white on the outside while our souls remain scarlet on the inside. That hypocrisy, that acting, was the principal vice of the Scribes and the Pharisees and often can remain the downfall for those who behave in a religious way but whose hearts are far from the Lord. Jesus says of them that they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy religious burdens on others without lifting a finger to help them, whereas the truth, although often challenging, is meant always to set us free. The reason why they didn’t lift a finger in charity and seek to help people who were struggling to align their lives to God’s will was because they were doing everything not for God or others but to be seen: they widened the phylacteries that would contain verses of sacred scripture in their locks of hair, lengthened the tassels that were to remind them of revelation, and preferred to be acknowledged by everyone for their religious devotion in banquets, synagogues and marketplaces. They were the types who, Jesus told us on Ash Wednesday, pray, fast and give alms not out of love for God and others but to be rewarded by others’ praise and esteem, the exact opposite of the type of motivation God wants: their motivation was not true love of God but rather self-love under the mask of devotion. They sat on Moses’ seat but didn’t share Moses’ own humility before God (Ex 4:10,13). Their knowledge of the law, rather than moving them to conform their lives ever more to God’s revelation, became in essence an obstacle, because it made them proud not humble; they manipulated their knowledge of the law to seek to grow in others’ eyes. They sought the titles of “rabbi” — which lite...