Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent

Reading 1: Is 1:10, 16-20

Responsorial Psalm: 50:8-9, 16-17, 21 and 23

Gospel: Mt 23:1-12

Today’s Gospel reading teaches us that humility is the most foundationally Christian hermeneutic. A hermeneutic is a tool for interpreting something, and the message Jesus gives us is that without humility we are incapable of seeing and understanding the mysteries of the Kingdom.
The scribes and Pharisees personify a prideful attitude, and their egocentricity has blinded them to the truth of things. After all, what is humility if not a seeing things with proper perspective? Because the scribes and Pharisees lack humility, they no longer possess a proper understanding of their own place, or of their neighbor, or even of God. They are the centers of their moral universe, and all their works flow from this. In response, Jesus Christ offers us something radically different: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matt 23:12).

In his work The Glories of Divine Grace, Matthias Scheeben, the great nineteenth-century German theologian, described humility, together with the virtue of chastity, as “the rarest and most beautiful blossoms of the tree of Christian grace [which] outside the Christian world are least known and understood.” More than all the other virtues, he said, “humility and chastity are closely connected with all the mysteries of grace and supernatural love.” In approaching the Christian life, therefore, let us continually challenge ourselves to grow in this archetypal virtue of humility. Like the figure described in the first reading from Isaiah, let us examine our self–centeredness, question our ulterior motives, and call out our own false humility. And in doing so, let us pray intently for the grace to have our souls become white as snow.

Do I take seriously the principle that all the other virtues flow from humility?

Am I honest enough to acknowledge that I am more prideful than I would like to think I am, and that without Christ’s grace I am incapable of seeing myself accurately?

Reference:

Journey Through Lent: Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings by Clement Harrold