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Perhaps the immortal lyrics of Brian Howard say it best: “I don’t wanna be a Pharisee, ’Cause they’re not fair, you see.”
Pharisees must be important for us to focus on because the New Testament authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, use the word Pharisee 97 times.
They are especially important for religiously inclined lay people. Sadducees were priests in Jesus’ time, but the Pharisees were laymen. They were the true believers trying to preserve Jewish culture under the Romans by staying close to the Chair of Moses — just as true believers today want to preserve Christian culture in secular times by staying close to the Chair of Peter.
That’s why the 23rd Chapter of the Gospel of Matthew scares me to death.
That is where Jesus spends all 39 lines of one of the longest chapters in Matthew delivering his “Seven Woes of the Pharisees,” spelling out the dark side of religious commitment. He has to shout the lesson and repeat himself because generation after generation, year after year, we don’t seem to get it. Read them yourself today, and use this quick guide to help apply them to Catholic life today.
First, beware mistaking the Church for an exclusive club.
Jesus says: “Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men or allow those who would enter to go in.”
Being in the Church truly makes us “children of the light” who were “called out of the darkness.” But when we take the special status of our relationship with Christ as a way to feel superior to others and exclude them, we are perverting the very heart of the Gospel.
Second, beware treating the Church like a corporate campaign.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte,” Jesus says, “[then] make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”
Especially in America, we tend to treat apostolic work more like Sam Walton than St. Francis. We pride ourselves on being the biggest and best and consider ourselves “winning” if we have bigger numbers, celebrity converts, social media attention, and secular success. Jesus does want us to teach the nations his commandments — but to show that he is great, not us.
Third, beware considering the Church a spiritual pleasure dome.
Jesus says: “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If any one swears by the temple, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’”
The trappings of religion are important — Exodus specifies the vestments priests wear and the Psalms and Jesus both praise Jerusalem’s elaborate Temple. But when we value the trappings over God himself, we are doing something monstrous, like valuing a wedding ring more than a spouse.
Fourth, beware thinking of the Church as a legal bureaucracy.
Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith.”
The minutiae of the law, from tithing to uncleanness, were meant to acknowledge that God rules supreme in every aspect of our life. But when we focus on the rules instead of their object, we invert them, turning the Church into a bean-counting bureaucracy and faith into a petty superstition.
Fifth, beware reducing the Church to a liturgical movement.
Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”
Liturgy has always been of critical importance, from Melchizedek to the Institution of the Eucharist. But focusing on the externals of worship instead of who we worship is like only agreeing to kiss a wife if she has the right makeup on.
Sixth, beware thinking of the Church as a spiritual Instagram.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus says, “you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”
This is the subtle difference between “they perform their works to be seen” and “you are the light of the world;” but it’s also the crucial difference between showing off and witnessing.
Seventh, we mistake the “faith of our fathers” with our own faith.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus says, “[you] adorn the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves.”
The Pharisees commit the mistake of “virtue signaling” — thinking that they are made great by what they admire. We do this all the time — but we will find out the hard way that admiring virtue is totally different from practicing virtue.
We do have one great example of how to beat each of these tendencies.
I love what Dr. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis says in his commentary on Matthew 23: “Mary is the very antitype of the Pharisee … nurturing and instilling for all time the pattern, the form and the perfection of the Christian soul.”
Pray her Magnificat with the intention of toppling Pharisaism in the Church, starting with yourself.
