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Saturday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Ezekiel 43:1-7B
Psalm 85:9AB & 10, 11-12, 13-14
Matthew 23:1-12
S
UMMARY
Jesus spoke to the crowd and to his disciples, saying the scribes and the
Pharisees have taken their place of authority and everyone must do and
observe all things they tell you, but do not follow their example; for they
preach but they do not practice. Their works are performed to be seen.
They love the places of honor and greetings by title. As for you: whoever
exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be ex-
alted.
R
EFLECTION
This is a familiar gospel each of us has heard a number of times and we all
acknowledge the meaning, but how many of us ˈTalk the Talkˉ, but don˅t
ˈWalk the Walkˉ? I can say that in my lifetime I have had many positions of
authority and have been in the situation of whatever I did would be mim-
icked by others. So if I did something that was cool others might do the
same thing and if I did something that circumvented the rules it provided
others the permission to do the same. I suppose that many of you have
had the same experience in your life and had to face the consequences, as
I have, of telling someone that what they did, even though I had done the
same thing, was not the right thing to do.
But this gospel is about much more than this type of event, it is about each
of us being good examples of what Jesus is asking us to do. We attend
church, partake of communion and then as we leave the parking lot we
honk our horn because someone is tuning in ahead of us, or we go off to
breakfast and we are irritated for having to wait for service, or we are at the
grocery store and we are upset that someone in the express line has more
than 15 items.