We human beings can often be hypocritical, can’t we? We can offer prayers and offerings to God, but if they are not accompanied by words and actions that are congruent, 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, and considered one of the inspirations of the monasticism movement in the Church. 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. 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 many ways, that they preached one thing and then put something else into practice, that they observed the strict little nuances of God’s laws, but then violated the spirit of the law, so not really following the laws at all. Do we need to look into our lives today to see how we are hypocritical, how we are leading ourselves and others away from the road of faith?
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