Are you for real — inside and out? - Daily Reflections October 18,2014

BEWARE OF THE LEAVEN

 

I love to cook, but baking is beyond my ken. But I do know that the leaven, though practically invisible and inedible in itself, is behind the miracle of the bread becoming eventually palatable. Leaven works in the background. It does its work quietly, unobtrusively and slowly but surely.

       The Lord today warns us of the leaven of the Pharisees. It would be pointless now to be wary of the same Pharisees He was referring to in His time, but the focus is not so much on the person of the Pharisees, as what they stand for then — and now.

         The key word is hypocrisy. We have to be wary of hypocrisy — the quintessential Pharisaical attitude. And that, my dear friends, was not and is not the monopoly of the Pharisees. A hypocrite is one who acts or pretends to be someone else. The word ordinarily came to mean someone who pretends to be good on the outside while being really evil, or at least not that good, on the inside.

       The Lord warns us about the leaven of the Pharisees, which He points out as hypocrisy. It means there is an added element, and that new element has to do with the subtle manipulation, the stealth and the subterfuge that one can do to work at cross purposes with another.

         We all could be little hypocrites at any given time; yes, including the proponent of the “Padre Damaso” stunt almost two years ago, in which, through subtle and not-so-subtle manipulation of timing, place and media exposure, the protester managed to get the attention and the misguided sympathy of people who probably didn’t even know Padre Damaso from Adam.

         It was a stunt, as subtle and quietly manipulative, of people’s superficial understanding of the infamous character from Rizal’s novel. In the end, he became the very Damaso he was denouncing, not unlike what manipulative media really does now to the unsuspecting audience.

       Beware of the leaven! Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS: Are you for real — inside and out?

 

Dear Lord, grant me the courage to be always true to myself and to others.