You yourselves do not lift one finger to touch burdens
15 OCTOBER (Lk 11,42-46)
The distortions of sin which the pure, spotless and holy religion of our God is obliged to by men, have always accompanied its journey through history. The evil of evils, the sin of sins is always one: the transformation of religion into hypocrisy, into a farce, into a play, into an external structure, in the service of a few for the oppression of many. Religion is light. If it is transformed into an oppressive darkness it is the aberration. There does not exist a more sinful and more devastating wickedness than it. Prophets have always risen up against such aberration. They have always denounced the wickedness of the man responsible for the care and supervision so that nothing impure was to interfere in the relationship with God. But their cry has always been unheard.
“Come, let us return to the Lord, For it is he who has rent, but he will heal us; he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds. He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence. Let us know, let us strive to know the Lord; as certain as the dawn is his coming, and his judgment shines forth like the light of day! He will come to us like the rain, like spring rain that waters the earth.” What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your piety is like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away. For this reason I smote them through the prophets, I slew them by the words of my mouth; For it is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than holocausts. But they, in their land, violated the covenant; there they were untrue to me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. As brigands ambush a man, a band of priests slay on the way to Shechem, committing monstrous crime. In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing: there harlotry is found in Ephraim, Israel is defiled. For you also, O Judah, a harvest has been appointed (Hos 6,1-11).
Even today, the risk of the exteriority is strong. It is always easy to build a religion made up of things, in which God and man are absent. It is the religion of human success, of the ephemeral glory, of the search of places to be filled, ministries to be exercised and positions to be settled. It is also easy to fall into the religion of spiritual simony other than the material one, in which you put forward all the influences to guide decisions, set negotiations, obtain results according to our will. Modes of externality change, evolve, get updated, become more and more subtle, but they always devour the true religion and make it a pile of human interests.
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 religion of superficiality, of hypocrisy, of pure formality, of liturgy for the sake of liturgy, is highly polluting. Whoever practices it remains infected of its illness without even realizing it. The Pharisees of yesterday and today generate only impurity, immorality and evil. However, they do it naturally, having by now all their lives become sinful outward appearance. The conscience is unable to react, enlighten, support, govern decisions and actions. The heart is immersed in mud and there is no possibility of being able to come out of it. You only need the miracle of a new creation. But even this is impossible because it is the fruit of a true conversion. Jesus knows that the for the Pharisees and doctors of the law of his time, his words would never have been heard. Why does he then pronounce them? Certainly not only for them, but also for us that would have come after them. Jesus wants that no one of his disciples falls into the sin of hypocrisy and empty appearance. The purity of the Gospel does not allow it, because his religion does not consist in things, but in a pure listening to every word that comes out of his mouth. The Word is heard in the Holy Spirit and it must be lived in the Holy Spirit.
Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us clean at heart and mind.