We human beings can often be hypocritical and contradictory. We can offer prayers and offerings to God, but if they’re not accompanied by words and actions that are congruent with our prayers, perhaps God will see our hypocrisy and will doubt our sincerity, according to Isaiah. I recently saw a quote from Anthony of Egypt, the most famous of the Desert Fathers, whose feast day we celebrated back in January at one of our Daily Masses. Anthony said: "Whoever has not experienced temptation cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Without temptations, no one can be saved.” We pray that we not be led to temptation, but I never considered seeing this from Anthony’s perspective in this quote. I think in a lot of ways, our temptations can lead us to the hypocrisy that Isaiah and Jesus warn us of today. Jesus was always pointing out to the Pharisees that they were hypocritical in the way they lived out their faith, that they preached one thing and then their actions were quite different. The Pharisees attempted to observe the strict details of God’s law, but then violated the spirit of the law, so not really following the law at all. We are called to look into our lives of faith to see how we are hypocritical, how we are leading ourselves and others away from the truth of the faith.
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