All their works are performed to be seen.
Are our works performed for love of for our own vanity and pride? One way to test this is to see whether we take pleasure when other people fail to live up to our standards.
They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry
and lay them on people's shoulders,
but they will not lift a finger to move them.
The Pharisees don't actually care so much about love and goodness as they do about feeling superior to others. Even if they could help others to carry the burden of the law they would not do it, because then they wouldn't have this perceived advantage over others. It's extreme enough that it impacts their own ability to keep the law. They preach but do not practice because as long as they seem holy and righteous that is good enough. They don't feel a strong need to actually be such.
Do we take secret pride in being Christians who check all the boxes? Are we proud when we know more about the mass or about Scripture or the Church than others? Secretly, of course. We would never say so. But isn't it something we feel as an affirmation first, and only then, after as a desire to share what we have?
As we are called to be virtuous day after day do we forget why and for whom we are called? Does it becoming more upkeep of our image rather than a fresh opportunity to be loving and just?
Wash yourselves clean!
Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes;
cease doing evil; learn to do good.
Make justice your aim: redress the wronged,
hear the orphan's plea, defend the widow.
Let us get reconnected with what should have been our motivation all along.
The greatest among you must be your servant.
Let us choose to serve, in practical ways, for the sake of others. If we can do this in hidden and unrecognized ways so much the better. The more we fade into the background the more we let God into the foreground to show his saving power.
To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
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