During Mass this morning, Francis again stigmatizes the behavior of those who do not follow the path shown by Jesus, like the scribes and Pharisees of the Gospel, they are "hypocrites of cases", "intellectuals without talent" who "do not have the intelligence to find God, to explain God with intelligence” who “lead God’s people down a dead end”.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "Think of  hypocrisy in the Church: how much it hurts us all". Again today, Pope Francis returned to criticize the behavior of those who do not follow the path shown by Jesus and who "hurt the Church." In recent days, he criticized those who "curse" who "spread rumours, defamation and slander," today the hypocrites. And shortly after the celebration of the Mass, at the general audience, he again spoke out against "gossip".

During the Mass celebrated in Casa Santa Marta, reports Vatican Radio, Francis said the passage of the Gospel that contrasts the behavior of the scribes and Pharisees - who make a show of praying, fasting, and almsgiving - with the path indicated by Jesus, Who points out to His disciples the proper attitude to assume in the same circumstances: giving alms and praying "in secret." "And your Father, Who sees in secret, will reward you." Pope Francis criticized not only the vanity of the scribes and Pharisees, but also those who impose "so many precepts on the faithful." He called them "hypocrites of casuistry," "intellectuals without talent" who "don't have the intelligence to find God, to explain God with understanding," and so "lead the People of God down a dead end".

"Jesus says: 'You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to others.' They are ethicists without goodness, they do not know what goodness is. But they are ethicists, aren't they? 'You have to do this, and this, and this . . .' They fill you with precepts, but without goodness. And those are some of the phylacteries, of the tassels they lengthen, so many things, to make a pretence of being majestic, perfect, they have no sense of beauty. They have no sense of beauty. They achieve only the beauty of a museum. They are intellectuals without talent, ethicists without goodness, the bearers of museum beauty. These are the hypocrites that Jesus rebukes so strongly.

"But He doesn't stop there". "In today's Gospel, the Lord speaks about another class of hypocrites, 'holy rollers'. "The Lord speaks about fasting, about prayer, about almsgiving: the three pillars of Christian piety, of interior conversion, that the Church proposes to us all in Lent. There are even hypocrites along this path, who make a show of fasting, of giving alms, of praying. I think that when hypocrisy reaches this point in the relation with God, we are coming very close to the sin against the Holy Spirit. These do not know beauty, they do not know love, these do not know the truth: they are small, cowardly."

"We think about the hypocrisy in the Church: how bad it makes all of us," Pope Francis said candidly. Instead he pointed out another "icon" for imitation, a person described in another passage of the Gospel: the publican who prayed with humble simplicity, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, a sinner." This, the Pope said, "is the prayer we should say every day, knowing that we are sinners" but "with concrete sins, not theoretical [sin]." And this prayer, he concluded, "will help us to take the opposite road," the road opposed to the hypocrisy that we are all tempted to".

"But all of us also have grace, the grace that comes from Jesus Christ: the grace of joy; the grace of magnanimity, of largesse. Hypocrites do not know what joy is, what largesse is, what magnanimity is."

 

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