HEAR YE! HEAR YE!
Memorial of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
My dear encountered couples:
During these days of shouting everybody’s secrets from the rooftops by means of investigative reporting and the publishing of those reports, careers are ended, reputations are destroyed. We no longer have to wait until the end of the world to find out what people are up to. We can read it in the scandal sheets, hear it on radio, view it on television. Only the quiet people hidden away in the mountains are immune from publicity. But then that’s not always true, is it? Sometimes even their privacy is ferreted out. We all have to be careful of what we do — if not for moral reasons, at least for our own reputations.
Jesus exposed the scribes and Pharisees. “You are like whitewashed tombs,” he told them in the presence of onlookers and listeners. You are “beautiful to look at on the outside but inside full of filth and dead men’s bones. You present to view a holy exterior while hypocrisy and evil fill you within.” Jesus could have gotten a job with the Washington Post or Miami Herald, not to mention the infamous Enquirer.
In the long run (I’m thinking about our life in eternity) it really makes no difference what people think or say of us. What is important is what Jesus Christ and his Father know of us. I feel sure there were all sorts of rumors being spread around about the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, and many of them were probably false. But what Jesus said was the truth, and nothing but the truth - the GOSPEL TRUTH. That’s what counts! Live in such a way that you are at peace with yourself. If you do, I feel sure Jesus will have nothing to say about you but the best.
