Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too

16 OTTOBRE (Lk 11,42-46)

The worst evil that can happen to a people is falsehood, error and lies in teaching law. The moral, religious, political, social, civil, economic, financial, philosophical and theological corruption, is the result of this false teaching. Jeremiah denounces this teaching. The ruin of the people of the covenant is to be attributed. A people without the law according to fullness of truth is a community that falls into the abyss of personal thought and ethical and moral relativism.

This word of the Lord came to me: Go, cry out this message for Jerusalem to hear! I remember the devotion of your youth, how you loved me as a bride, Following me in the desert, in a land unsown. Sacred to the Lord was Israel, the first fruits of his harvest; Should anyone presume to partake of them, evil would befall him, says the Lord. Listen to the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob! All you clans of the house of Israel, thus says the Lord: What fault did your fathers find in me that they withdrew from me, Went after empty idols, and became empty themselves? They did not ask, “Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, Who led us through the desert, through a land of wastes and gullies, Through a land of drought and darkness, through a land which no one crosses, where no man dwells?”

When I brought you into the garden land to eat its goodly fruits, You entered and defiled my land, you made my heritage loathsome. The priests asked not, “Where is the Lord?” Those who dealt with the law knew me not: the shepherds rebelled against me. The prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after useless idols. Therefore will I yet accuse you, says the Lord, and even your children’s children I will accuse. Pass over to the coast of the Kittim and see, send to Kedar and carefully inquire: Where has the like of this been done? Does any other nation change its gods? – yet they are not gods at all! But my people have changed their glory for useless things. Be amazed at this, O heavens, and shudder with sheer horror, says the Lord.

Two evils have my people done: they have forsaken me, the source of living waters; They have dug themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that hold no water. Consider your conduct in the Valley, recall what you have done: A frenzied she-camel, coursing near and far, breaking away toward the desert, Snuffing the wind in her ardor – who can restrain her lust? No beasts need tire themselves seeking her; in her month they will meet her. As the thief is shamed when caught, so shall the house of Israel be shamed: They, their kings and their princes, their priests and their prophets; They who say to a piece of wood, “You are my father,” and to a stone, “You gave me birth” (Cf. Jer 2,1-37).

The doctors of the law have the truth of God and man in their hands. However, they, with great skill and sagacity, reduce it every day in falsehood, error and lie. The result of this teaching is the darkening of the moral conscience, from which life in all its manifestations depends on. When a teacher of the truth is transformed into a master of deceit, for the people of the Lord there is no more salvation. True light is lacking in it. All are condemned to walk in moral and spiritual darkness.

Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done, without overlooking the others. Woe to you Pharisees! You love the seat of honor in synagogues and greetings in marketplaces. Woe to you! You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.” Then one of the scholars of the law said to him in reply, “Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.” And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law! You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.

The kindness of the mother, the fortitude of the father and the joy of the brothers are missing to the doctors of the law. They do not love man, because there are not gradual in their teaching of the will of the Lord to his people. They do not walk in the law and consequently theirs is a static imperfect and often even deleterious teaching.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us true teachers of the law.