Humbly, I submit …

A recording of today's gospel and reflection can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (Matthew 23:1-12) sees Jesus launch a scathing attack on the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. They must be obeyed due to their authority – they sit in Moses’ chair - but their example must be utterly shunned. Jesus lays emphasis on the fact that they burden others with duties that they themselves neglect, but especially that they seek their reward in the admiration or veneration of others. Not so should it be among Jesus’ disciples, neither overburdening each other, nor vying for the first place, but giving way to each other, ever decreasing as Christ increases in them. Resorting to hyperbole, Jesus tells His followers not to seek any honours whatsoever, for in the end only those who humble themselves will be exalted.

There are many lessons on which we could dwell in this gospel passage but let us go to an uncomfortable one today. For this gospel is a commentary on what direction our path should take in the face of corrupt religious authority. The Pharisees were the keepers of the law and readily reminded others of how they were failing in that regard. Yet their rigidity and pedantry were only a secondary fault. Their primary fault was in defacing the image of God in themselves and warping it in others, even as they feigned to serve Him. Yes, this was a matter of hypocrisy, but there are many hypocrites out there whose peccadillos are known to them alone. In the case of the Pharisees, their faults were obvious and public, and there they were, acclaiming themselves the voice of the divine while preening and congratulating themselves on looking so holy and so refined. Both saintliness and devilry proceed by imitation: either we become perfect like our heavenly Father, remembering at all times our lowly status as disciples, or we arrogate to ourselves privileges that do not belong to us, in imitation of the Father of Lies. The devil, says St Jerome, is the ape of God i.e. his insincere imitator.

Thus, corrupt religious authority, which has the appearance of godliness but departs from it in tone, manner, or substance. And let us not indulge in the fantasy that its presence is limited to a few books of Scripture and the remote and misty depths of history. The story of the Church is uncomfortably filled with the ranks of Pharisees in every generation, betraying their duty to reflect the image of God to others, from the traitor who was first appointed within the ranks of the apostles, to those who turned the church of Corinth into a chaotic community; from Pope Alexander VI who hosted notorious orgies to Pope Leo X whose excesses finally stirred Luther’s temper to breaking point; and more recently, from clergy who have destroyed the innocence of the little ones by a depravity that is itself a profound mockery of sexuality, to the religious superiors who wreck subordinates with their destructive models of leadership and the burdens of their own inner wounds. Shakespeare in Measure for Measure, a play which is all about the abuse of authority, found the right formula for such individuals:

But man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep.

Incidentally, Pharisees would not prosper were it not for a band of individuals who stand, as it were, between them and the people, who flatly refuse to accept that the Pharisees are corrupt or wrong, either out of wayward respect, or out of wayward charity, or out of an unregulated sense of their own need for safety. Yet they too become in their turn Pharisees, or at least pale imitators of the holy and humble restraint that filled St Catherine of Sienna, even as she warned Pope Gregory XI. Prophets speak truth to power, and we are all baptised priests, prophets, and kings.

Yet this passage in the gospel today also offers a lifeline to every Pharisee and to those who look on in horror at their actions.

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

How often has it been said, by saint after saint, that the true foundation of the spiritual life is humility? Humility, the virtue by which we recognise that we are hummus of the earth:

Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

But hummus is not a poor soil; it is a dark, rich, nutrient dense material, made of decomposing plant and animal matter. In that sense, it is a surprisingly apt metaphor for us, for our self-knowledge is like the breakdown of all that happens to us, all that we experience, as we ruminate on God and on our lives in the light of the gospel. With humility’s energy, we grow, please God, day by day, in an awareness of how much we depend on God, of how weak we are on our own, of how much real life comes not from ourselves but from His seeds planted in us that long to spring forth with new growth and fruit in abundance.

Humility is then the only answer to the Pharisees and to those who are corrupt in the exercise of their religious authority. For humility is integrity, as is daring to speak the name of evil when we are faced by it. Humility is, in other words, the surest way to keep a grip on the truth, and not to be satisfied with any of its many phoney replacements.

This is a lesson which is good for us, regardless of what level of authority we may possess. In this regard, we can read and reread the words that Georges Bernanos, author of Diary of a Country Priest, wrote about the differences between St Francis and Martin Luther in the following terms:

It is quite possible that Saint Francis of Assisi was no less disgusted than Luther by the debauchery and simony of prelates. We can even be sure that his suffering on this account was fiercer, because his nature was very different from that of the monk of Wittenberg. But Francis did not challenge iniquity; he was not tempted to confront it; instead, he threw himself into poverty, immersing himself in it as deeply as possible along with his followers. He found in poverty the very source and wellspring of all absolution and all purity. Instead of attempting to snatch from the Church all her ill-gotten goods, he overwhelmed her with invisible treasures. And under the hand of this beggar the heaps of gold and lust began blossoming like an April hedge…