Matthew 23:27-32 for
Wednesday of the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s
biting Gospel is only a small part of a longer tongue-lashing Christ gave the
scribes and Pharisees.
In his
drawn-out broadside he went so far as to call them children of hell.
The
everlasting woe we call hell
does not show up fully in the Old Testament as a straightforward truth.
Heaven as a reward
for human persons also does not
show up in the Old Testament that sees heaven as the dwelling of none but God.
Christ at
last broke into history with the naked news of an everlasting hell for the
wicked and of everlasting heavenly life with God for the righteous.
Christ was
hard on the scribes and Pharisees— he gave them hell,
as the saying goes— because they would not acknowledge they were sinners
needing to repent, to change their minds, their wills, their deeds.
Such
conversion is the true and straightforward way for meeting Christ ON HIS TERMS
in his Eucharistic Body and Blood.
We know
this is true if we mark and mind the words Christ says in giving us his Body
and Blood at every Mass.
Take... eat... my Body... given up for you... drink... my
Blood... poured out for you... FOR THE
FORGIVENESS OF SINS.
Those are
Christ’s terms for his giving and our taking his Body and Blood.
If— like
the scribes and Pharisees— we do not repent, then we cut our own selves off
from the forgiveness of sins.
That was
not what Christ in his love wanted— not for the scribes, not for the Pharisees,
not for us.
Repent, and believe in the Gospel!
Turn.
Love. Repeat.
