GOSPEL POWER | AUGUST 25, 2021 - Wednesday - 21st Week in Ordinary Time

1st Reading: 1 Thes 2:9-13 

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 139 – You have searched me  and you know me, Lord. 

Gospel: Mt 23:27-32  

Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you  are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but  inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.  So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you  are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build  the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous,  and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would  not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’  Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of  those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of  your ancestors.

Reflection:

The harsh language of Jesus in this Gospel can make  us recoil. How do we account for it? The Scripture is  God’s Word but written in human words. Though the human  component of the work embodies perfectly the message of God, its  expressions are subject to all the limitations of the mindset of the  human author, his socio-cultural conditionings and psycho-emotional  state when he wrote the work. The Holy Spirit, who inspired the  writing, respected the human author’s freedom as regards literary  composition. Thus, the harsh tone of Jesus’ address to the scribes  and Pharisees somehow reflects the later conflicts that strained the  relationship between Matthew’s Christian community and the Jewish  religious leaders at the time of the Gospel’s composition. But this  does not minimize the validity of the core message, which is the  concern of Jesus for the integrity of leaders.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, help us to read the Scripture with faith, just as they have  been written with faith. Amen.