Gospel: Matthew 23:23-26
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You do not forget the mint, anise and cumin seeds when you demand the tenth of everything; but then, you forget what is most fundamental in the law: justice, mercy and faith! You should have done these things without neglecting the others. Blind guides! You strain out a mosquito, but swallow a camel.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You fill the plate and the cup, with theft and violence, and then pronounce a blessing over them. Blind Pharisee! Purify the inside first, then the outside, too, will be purified.

Reflections
“Without neglecting others.”
Our modern consumerist world brags about the economic growth, continuous progress and development, and breakthroughs in medicine, science and techno­ logy, that provide a better quality of life. But is it really a better quali­ ty of life, is it real progress, that we have before us? We now live in a period in which the gap between the rich and the poor has become tremendously wide, almost im­ possible to bridge; in a period in which poverty and homelessness is in every corner of the world. Are we not deceived when war and killings are justified? Are we not deceived when unfair labor practices are put into law? Are not the poor being robbed of their livelihood and food on their table when natural resources are plundered and destroyed? Our modern economic system has successfully developed and marketed a consumerist lifestyle that exploits our fellow humans, a kind of lifestyle that exhausts and destroys the limited resources of the Earth, a lifestyle that is not sustainable, and a lifestyle that is extremely difficult for majority of the peoples of the world to attain. The poor sector of the world and the various life­forms on Earth are being used and abused. They cry out for justice and mercy.

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