The Gospel for Wednesday of the 28th week in Ordinary Time is taken from Luke 11:42, 46th verse. The Lord said, woe to you, Pharisees. You pay tithes on mint, of rue, and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done without overlooking the others. Woe to you, Pharisees. You love the seats of honor in synagogues and greetings in marketplaces.

Woe to you. You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk. Then one of the scholars of the law said to him in reply, teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too. And he said, woe also to you, scholars of the law. You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them. Father, the spirit that you often point out in people who have lost a sense of who they really are in God clearly seem to be pointing always to the same thing.

They don’t understand that they are called to love God. And you can’t love God unless you know that God loves you. And there we get to the most powerful, potent teaching of the New Testament. The God who condemns in the Old Testament is the God who loves the sinner in the New Testament. Take a moment to reflect upon these images and I will end with a closing prayer. Foreign closing prayer.

Father, we need to have insight. You need to show us the times and the ways in which we are acting out not love and not forgiveness and not peace, but the opposite. So bless us with attention to who we are and underscore for us the importance that we need to be filled with your gift, the gift of love for our brothers and sisters. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.