Woe to You, Pharisees
A bit of background history first ...
At the beginning of Israel's life as a nation, they had very few laws. The Ten Commandments pretty much summed it up, and even those could be summed up into two laws: love God, love your neighbor.
So God said, "You are my firstborn son," and He sent that nation out to be a light to all the other nations. Through Israel, all the other nations were to learn what it meant to be children of God.
Of course, the first thing Israel did was worship a golden calf, and so it quickly became apparent that they were not yet ready to be a light to the nations - they were far more likely to be influenced by those nations.
So God imposed a few more laws - more specific stuff, stuff designed to keep Israel separate from the nations until they learned how to stand on their own two feet.
This was designed to humiliate Israel, to make them realize how weak they were, to ultimately make them cry out to God for help and grace - which He was ready to give from the start.
So this is the pattern of the Israelite story: sin, receive more laws; sin some more, receive even more laws; keep sinning, keep receiving more complicated laws.
What should have been a lesson in humility became a cause of pride for Israel. Instead of saying, "wow, we must be really weak if God has to isolate us from the other nations," they misinterpreted God and thought, "wow, we must be sooooo holy if God doesn't want us to be defiled by contact with those other filthy nations!"
This was the general attitude of the Pharisees in Our Lord's day, at a time when Ten Commandments had somehow grown to over 600 laws. They had come to love the particulars, the rituals, the purist specifics, and they mistook the means for the end itself.
For example: they had a law about washing their cups, but they got so caught up in washing cups that they missed the point, namely, that this was a ritual meant to demonstrate to them that they were *like* these cups and needed cleansing, both inside and out.
Not that there was anything wrong with the rituals - that's a mistake that a lot of people make, thinking that Our Lord condemned them for being ritualistic. Not so. He condemned them for elevating the rituals beyond what they were intended. That's why He says in Matt. 23 that the Pharisees should have understood what the rituals meant and followed the higher, deeper law which the rituals pointed to, without forgetting to do the rituals themselves. He wasn't anti-ritual, He was anti-missing-the-point.
I see a great tendency among Traditionalist Catholics today to fall into the same trap as the Pharisees.
We can so easily become hyper-critical and in the process, become hypocritical.
We get really cranky about our particulars and specifics, don't we? We insist that will not pray those new Luminous Mysteries; we read articles about how bad an idea the new mysteries are; we look down our noses at those who do choose to use them; we talk about the new mysteries with our parishioners and cluck our tongues; but then, how often do we neglect the 15 mysteries we already have?
"well, no, I rarely pray the Rosary, but darn it, if I was going to pray it, I certainly wouldn't use those new mysteries!" This is Pharisaical.
We can't stand the New Mass. We look down on those who do attend it - those poor "Novus Ordo Catholics." But when it comes right down to it, have we thought about why our beloved Mass is nearing extinction, why we can only get it twice a month, why we can only get it at odd hours on odd days?
If I know anything about the way God works, then I can say with certainty that the reason we don't have the Mass is because we're being punished; your fathers or my fathers or probably both neglected the Mass when it was in full bloom, and they took it for granted; so God took it away. Catholics in this country had grown lax and neglected the treasures of the Holy Faith; so God is taking it away from us.
Somehow, though, like Israel before us, we've taken a punishment that ought to be an occasion for humility and cries for help, and we've made it an occasion for pride. "Sniff - well, I don't go to the Novus Ordo, I only attend the Traditional Mass, with a pre-1962 Missal." Yes, but outside of this one particular ritual, do you live the Faith? Do you practice it? Do you pray the Rosary, do penance, speak often with your guardian angel and patron saints, teach your children the faith, enter into contemplative prayer frequently?
The Traditional Mass is better, don't get me wrong; the new mysteries of the Rosary are a pitiful innovation - but what did Our Lord say? Keep doing the rituals, just don't miss the point, and don't confuse an occasion of humility for an occasion of pride.
If you gripe and moan about these things, but never practice the faith and never do penance for the sins of our fathers which got us into this crisis, then you're nothing but a Pharisee - and believe me, God would rather you be a committed Novus Ordo Catholic who loves the faith and soaks up devotion than to be a by-the-book Traditionalist who only attends Mass on Sundays because it's nice to have a cause to fight for.
Think about these things the next time you're tempted to utter the words "Novus Ordo" with great contempt ...
At the beginning of Israel's life as a nation, they had very few laws. The Ten Commandments pretty much summed it up, and even those could be summed up into two laws: love God, love your neighbor.
So God said, "You are my firstborn son," and He sent that nation out to be a light to all the other nations. Through Israel, all the other nations were to learn what it meant to be children of God.
Of course, the first thing Israel did was worship a golden calf, and so it quickly became apparent that they were not yet ready to be a light to the nations - they were far more likely to be influenced by those nations.
So God imposed a few more laws - more specific stuff, stuff designed to keep Israel separate from the nations until they learned how to stand on their own two feet.
This was designed to humiliate Israel, to make them realize how weak they were, to ultimately make them cry out to God for help and grace - which He was ready to give from the start.
So this is the pattern of the Israelite story: sin, receive more laws; sin some more, receive even more laws; keep sinning, keep receiving more complicated laws.
What should have been a lesson in humility became a cause of pride for Israel. Instead of saying, "wow, we must be really weak if God has to isolate us from the other nations," they misinterpreted God and thought, "wow, we must be sooooo holy if God doesn't want us to be defiled by contact with those other filthy nations!"
This was the general attitude of the Pharisees in Our Lord's day, at a time when Ten Commandments had somehow grown to over 600 laws. They had come to love the particulars, the rituals, the purist specifics, and they mistook the means for the end itself.
For example: they had a law about washing their cups, but they got so caught up in washing cups that they missed the point, namely, that this was a ritual meant to demonstrate to them that they were *like* these cups and needed cleansing, both inside and out.
Not that there was anything wrong with the rituals - that's a mistake that a lot of people make, thinking that Our Lord condemned them for being ritualistic. Not so. He condemned them for elevating the rituals beyond what they were intended. That's why He says in Matt. 23 that the Pharisees should have understood what the rituals meant and followed the higher, deeper law which the rituals pointed to, without forgetting to do the rituals themselves. He wasn't anti-ritual, He was anti-missing-the-point.
I see a great tendency among Traditionalist Catholics today to fall into the same trap as the Pharisees.
We can so easily become hyper-critical and in the process, become hypocritical.
We get really cranky about our particulars and specifics, don't we? We insist that will not pray those new Luminous Mysteries; we read articles about how bad an idea the new mysteries are; we look down our noses at those who do choose to use them; we talk about the new mysteries with our parishioners and cluck our tongues; but then, how often do we neglect the 15 mysteries we already have?
"well, no, I rarely pray the Rosary, but darn it, if I was going to pray it, I certainly wouldn't use those new mysteries!" This is Pharisaical.
We can't stand the New Mass. We look down on those who do attend it - those poor "Novus Ordo Catholics." But when it comes right down to it, have we thought about why our beloved Mass is nearing extinction, why we can only get it twice a month, why we can only get it at odd hours on odd days?
If I know anything about the way God works, then I can say with certainty that the reason we don't have the Mass is because we're being punished; your fathers or my fathers or probably both neglected the Mass when it was in full bloom, and they took it for granted; so God took it away. Catholics in this country had grown lax and neglected the treasures of the Holy Faith; so God is taking it away from us.
Somehow, though, like Israel before us, we've taken a punishment that ought to be an occasion for humility and cries for help, and we've made it an occasion for pride. "Sniff - well, I don't go to the Novus Ordo, I only attend the Traditional Mass, with a pre-1962 Missal." Yes, but outside of this one particular ritual, do you live the Faith? Do you practice it? Do you pray the Rosary, do penance, speak often with your guardian angel and patron saints, teach your children the faith, enter into contemplative prayer frequently?
The Traditional Mass is better, don't get me wrong; the new mysteries of the Rosary are a pitiful innovation - but what did Our Lord say? Keep doing the rituals, just don't miss the point, and don't confuse an occasion of humility for an occasion of pride.
If you gripe and moan about these things, but never practice the faith and never do penance for the sins of our fathers which got us into this crisis, then you're nothing but a Pharisee - and believe me, God would rather you be a committed Novus Ordo Catholic who loves the faith and soaks up devotion than to be a by-the-book Traditionalist who only attends Mass on Sundays because it's nice to have a cause to fight for.
Think about these things the next time you're tempted to utter the words "Novus Ordo" with great contempt ...
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