14 October 2022
Friday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
There is something quite visceral about Jesus’ warning in today’s gospel about hypocrisy. Within the realms of traditional Jesuit education there existed the firm embrace of promoting the value of a virtuous man whose actions and words imitated his values. Thus, what one said had to have a firm rooting in the virtuous life. And to make the whole thing work, the Jesuits stressed the importance of clarity in spoken word and written prose. Those Jesuits understood the fundamental importance of honesty and how eventually it remains as the only method for true success. Fooling people by flattery may work some of the time, but eventually the whole edifice of falsehood falls because of its weak foundation. In short, if you are putting pickles on the label you had better put pickles in the jar. No wonder Dante put hypocrites in one of the lowest circles of hell.