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MARCH 21
EXTERNAL ORTHODOXY
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give
a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the
more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faith. You should
have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides,
who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!…” (Mt 23: 23-24)
The teachers of the law and Pharisees were very orthodox about fulfilling
certain external religious obligations, while neglecting the virtues that
these obligations were meant to foster: justice, mercy, and faith. The Lord
is criticizing them for embracing this external Orthodoxy, which selfrighteously
displayed such fidelity to secondary rules and regulations,
while missing their whole point.
Reading this passage today, I am reminded to beware of a purely-external
Orthodoxy, which clings to secondary issues, while neglecting “the more
important matters,” upon which the Lord Himself insists: justice, mercy,
and faith. I do, indeed, gratefully embrace certain external forms and
practices of my Tradition. But these external forms and practices do
not, in and of themselves, fulfill Christ’s call to me. He is calling me to
be filled with the Spirit of these practices, without Whom my external
piety is meaningless. Christ did not come, die on the Cross, and rise again,
to replace one set of external rules and regulations with another set of
external rules and regulations. He came to fill us with His Spirit.
So let me seek His Spirit today, in heartfelt prayer, and ask to be filled
with His gifts, of justice, mercy, and faith. “Create in me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right Spirit within me.” (Ps 50/51: 10)
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