HYPOCRISY AND GRACE



SAINT IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH, BISHOP, MARTYR  

Rom 4:1-8; Ps 32:1-2,5,11; Lk 12:1-7

Avoiding the Yeast of Pharisees

The root of hypocrisy is the desire to present to others qualities that are not genuinely ours. It is the desire to appear better than we really are to others. Hence, there is a saying that hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue. It arises from the desire of vice to dress itself in the borrowed garb of virtue. A hypocrite desires to deceive, which makes it evil and of the evil one. We are not truly converted when this yeast is present in us, for conversion is a sincere acknowledgement of our sinfulness before God and man. Hypocrisy is born from a desire to evade the grace of conversion, which we have called a prevenient grace. If we evade the prevenient grace, we equally evade the actual grace which follows it and occasions our encounter with Jesus Christ and declaration of faith in him. The implication of evading the prevenient and actual graces is our inability to see or return to God in thanksgiving and self-sacrifice. Because hypocrisy is born of a desire to avoid the light, it harbours the evil one. A life of hypocrisy is a life built on lies; thus, it is a life built on quicksand that will come crashing down at the first sign of life’s tempest. We are prone to the sin of hypocrisy because of our spiritual and bodily composition, since our hearts and intentions are hidden from the public.

Faith brings us to understand that God sees our inmost parts and judges us accordingly. Therefore, we must be open to prevenient grace, which strengthens our faith in God and helps us to avoid the yeast of the Pharisees. One who believes in Jesus Christ and walks with him will not be contaminated with the yeast of Pharisees, unless we lose our focus on him. Hence, our Lord instructs his followers to be vigilant against hypocrisy. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees—that is, their hypocrisy. Everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. For this reason, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in hidden places will be proclaimed on the housetop.” In other words, to come to God is to live in the light, because it is to pass our days in the full view of the One who sees all things. To turn to God in Jesus Christ is to be open to the prevenient grace He sends to us daily, by which we know His holy will for us and do it through the actual grace we amply receive in Jesus Christ. It is on this conviction that God knows us and watches over our lives that the Lord admonishes us to live without fear. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. I will tell you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has the power to cast into hell.” The life of a Christian is an open book and a sacrifice to God. Though it is sealed because it is patterned on the will of God, a mystery to the faithless.

Saint Paul presents this openness to God in faith as what sanctified the ancestors. Abraham is considered upright because he walked in faith before God. “What shall we say about Abraham, the ancestor from whom we are all descended? If Abraham was justified as a reward for doing something, he would really have had something to boast about, though not in God’s sight, because scripture says: “Abraham put his faith in God, and this faith was considered as justifying him.” Our openness to God’s graces helps us to know ourselves better in Christ and submit ourselves to God through him. The sincere humility which the grace of true conversion gives us pleases God, who sends the Spirit of His Son into us to redeem and adopt us. Saint Ignatius of Antioch was so conscious of his nothingness and indebtedness to God that he counted it a big honour to be thrown to the wild beast for the love of Jesus Christ. He was the second bishop of Antioch after St. Peter the Apostle. He was denounced, arrested, and condemned to death. He was transported to Rome to be thrown to the wild beast in the Arena. He wrote seven letters to various churches during his journey to Rome. In these letters, he dealt wisely and deeply with Christ, the Organisation of the Church, and the Christian life. They reveal his spirituality and facts about the history of the Church. He was martyred in 107 and celebrated on the 17th of October since the fourth century.

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, who adorn the sacred body of your Church with the confessions of holy Martyrs, grant, we pray, that, just as the glorious passion of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, which we celebrate today, brought him eternal splendour, so it may be for us unending protection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.  

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