NOT LEARNING FROM THE PAST

Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time

Lk 11:47-54

I cannot help it, the Gospel today reminds me of Joan of Arc. She was burnt at stake after Church officials of her time condemned her as a witch. Years later she was canonized and made patron saint of France. The Church that burnt her at stake is the same Church that exalted her as a saint!

Jesus condemned the religious leaders and scholars of the law of His time for their hypocrisy. His righteous anger against them seemed unending as it has been the topic of the Gospel since Monday this week. Today, He lambasted the Pharisees and the lawyers for murdering the prophets only to build monuments for them later on. Not that those who stood before Him were the ones who actually slaughtered the prophets, but that their ancestors did the killing while they did the building. The Pharisees and lawyers of His time shared the guilt of their ancestors, yet they acted as if their hands were clean. In their self-righteousness, they regarded some people as unclean. In their hypocrisy, they regarded themselves “holier than thou”. In their blindness, they failed to see their own need for repentance, forgiveness, and conversion of life.

Feodor Dostoevski, a great novelist, wrote in his book “The Brothers Karamazov”, “Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.” What the Church did to St. Joan of Arc proved this observation to be correct. What the Pharisees and the lawyers of Jesus’ time and their ancestors did to the prophets confirmed this declaration. What we and our ancestors did to Jesus verified this claim.

One of the greatest and humble acts that the late Pope John Paul II did at the turn of the millennium was to ask forgiveness in behalf of us all, Catholics, for the sins committed by the Church. Among many others, that included persecuting and killing some of the men and women we now venerate as saints.

One of the greatest mistakes of the Pharisees and the lawyers of Jesus’ time was not rejecting Jesus. It was their failure to heed the call to conversion where forgiveness readily awaited them.

We cannot repeat the past, but we can certainly learn from its mistakes so as not to repeat them, can we not? Otherwise, be careful because we certainly shall fall into the same trap that the religious leaders and scholars of the law during the time of Jesus fell into: hypocrisy, among many others.