22nd Sunday - Fr. Leo
In today’s scriptures, Jesus critiques religion. Religion is to serve the Spirit in brining people into God’s love. However, sometimes it can be misused to serve religious leaders or other political agendas. This is very clear in the Gospel when Jesus counters the Pharisees and Scribes who are concerned about keeping the external practices of their Jewish religion. He addresses their error when he says, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.”
As ‘good’ Jews, the Scribes and Pharisees think they are being faithful, but Jesus makes it clear that religion is about what is in the heart and what comes out of a person. We can practice the rituals of our religion, like going to Sunday Mass, but unless we are living in a Christian way, giving ourselves to others and striving to grow in our relationship with Christ, our external practice fails to engage the heart which is the true seat of genuine spirituality.
What I am saying, can be summarized in this: we can say the Our Father, but that isn’t necessarily praying the Our Father. We need to pray from the heart in response to God, and not play lip service in empty recitation.