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Gospel Reading for October 17, 2024 – Luke 11: 47-54
TRUTH
The Lord said: “Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed. Consequently, you bear witness and give consent to the deeds of your ancestors, for they killed them and you do the building. Therefore, the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and Apostles; some of them they will kill and persecute’ in order that this generation might be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who died between the altar and the temple building. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be charged with their blood! Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.” When Jesus left, the scribes and Pharisees began to act with hostility toward him and to interrogate him about many things, for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.
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Jesus sounds so angry at the scribes and Pharisees, and he has every right to be angry at them because they were making a mockery of religion by being HYPOCRITES. Worst is that they make people believe that it is how it should be practiced. This is exactly what Jesus meant in Matthew 18: 6 – “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
Christianity upholds the TRUTH. Therefore, even if we are baptized Christians, if we live in disregard of the teachings of Christ, we are HYPOCRITES as the scribes and Pharisees were. Imagine having a large millstone hung around our necks and be drowned in the depths of the sea not because we are being persecuted for being Christians, but for not being Christians! What an irony!
Lord Jesus, you are the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE! You are all we need in this world!
