Pope Francis Santa Marta Mass Hypocrisy

Jesus does not tolerate hypocrisy. We must be cured of hypocrisy and the medicine is knowing how to point the finger at ourselves before God, since whoever is unable to do so is not a good Christian.

In the Gospel reading, Luke 11: 37-41, Jesus is invited to lunch by a Pharisee and is highly criticised by the master of the house because he does not perform ritual ablution before sitting at the table to eat.

This behaviour is not tolerated by the Lord: hypocrisy. The Pharisees invited Jesus to lunch to judge him, not to befriend him. This is exactly what hypocrisy is, appearing one way but acting in another. It is to think secretly different from what the appearance is.

Jesus can't stand hypocrisy. And he often calls hypocritical Pharisees "whitened sepulchres". This is not an insult to Jesus, it is the truth. From the outside you are perfect, indeed starched, but from the inside you are something else. A hypocritical attitude comes from the great liar, the devil. The devil is the great hypocrite, all other hypocrites are his heirs.

Hypocrisy is the language of the devil, it is the language of evil that enters our hearts and is sown by the devil. You can't live with hypocritical people. Jesus, likes to expose hypocrites. He knows that it will be precisely this hypocritical attitude that will lead to his death, because the hypocrite does not think whether he uses lawful means or not, he uses slander? "Let's make slander"; false witness. We are looking for false witness.

Some may object that there is no hypocrisy like this here. But to think that is a mistake. Hypocritical language; I won't say that it's normal, but it's common, it's everyday. The appearance of being one way but being another. An example of this, is in the struggle for power. Jealousy makes you act in a certain way, with poison within, poison to kill, because hypocrisy always kills, always, sooner or later it kills.

It is necessary to heal ourselves from this attitude. But what is the medicine. The answer is to say the truth before God. It is to accuse oneself. We must learn to accuse ourselves: "I have done this, I think so, ill-mannered..I have envy, I would like to destroy that..." what is inside us and tell ourselves before God. This is a spiritual exercise that is not common, it is not usual, but we must try to do it: accuse ourselves, see ourselves in sin, hypocrisy, in the wickedness that is in our hearts. Because the devil sows evil and say to the Lord: "But look Lord, this is me!", and say it humbly.

We learn to accuse ourselves, something perhaps too difficult but it is so: a Christian who does not know how to accuse themselves is not a good Christian and risks falling into hypocrisy.

In Peter’s prayer he tells the Lord "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord". Let us learn to accuse ourselves, "we, ourselves".