Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent
March 15, 2022
Daily Reading from the USCCB: Matthew 23:1-12
These first days of Lent have been concerned with conversion, with changing our way of life, with prayer, with becoming different. Today’s reading is about authenticity–about genuineness. It calls us to be in fact what we present ourselves to be–to be persons of spiritual substance rather than superficial show.
The Pharisees liked to be important. They enjoyed being conspicuously religious. They were inclined to look down on people who weren’t as clearly pious as they. Today Jesus tells his disciples that all that show doesn’t really amount to much and can in fact be spiritually destructive.
Jesus says that what’s important is not the religious appearance we present but the reality that underlies the appearance. How much of me is genuine?
