June 06, 2015
Saturday
9th Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Tb 12:1-20
Gospel: Mark 12:38-44
As Jesus was teaching, he also said to them, “Beware of those teachers of the Law who enjoy walking around in long robes and being greeted in the marketplace, and who like to occupy reserved seats in the synagogues and the first places at feasts. They even devour the widow’s and the orphan’s goods while making a show of long prayers. How severe a sentence they will receive!”
Jesus sat down opposite the Temple treasury and watched the people dropping money into the treasury box; and many rich people put in large offerings. But a poor widow also came and dropped in two small coins.
Then Jesus called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all those who gave offerings. For all of them gave from their plenty, but she gave from her poverty and put in everything she had, her very living.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life
Experience)
While the Bible almost always associates hypocrisy with the Scribes and the Pharisees, there were many Jews in Jesus’ time who were equally hypocrites. There were Jews, in fact, who loved to drop huge donations into the Temple Treasury box for a show. They made sure they got enough return on investment in terms of public attention by dramatically, ceremoniously and ostentatiously dropping those huge donations to the box for all people to see. In stark contrast was the case of a widow who tried her best to escape public notice as she dropped a very insignificant amount. Jesus must have found in the widow a welcome relief from his disgusting experiences with hypocrites.
In Revelations 3:15 hypocrites are referred to as people who are “neither hot nor cold.” Being neither hot nor cold, God will vomit out the hypocrite. What is the reason behind God’s great disgust towards the hypocrite? William Hazlitt, in his ‘Characteristics’, wrote: “The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy”. It is the lack of sincerity, a deficiency that is inimical to truth, which makes the hypocrite so detestable in God’s eyes.
By the same measure God loves the humble because in being in touch with his humanity he lives in sincerity. Hypocrisy and humility both begin with letter ‘h’, yet only humility is closest to the word human. The more humble the person, the more in touch he is with his true nature as coming from dust. Because God would like us to live our human lives to the full, he really prefers that we stay humble and therefore human, just like the poor widow at the Temple. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM., MAPM. ([email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org).
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