By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — While God’s holy church is made up of
sinners, it also has its share of hypocrites who love to cry
“scandal” to point out the failings of others and make themselves
appear pure, Pope Francis said at morning Mass.
“The devil doesn’t have anything to do with repentant
sinners because they look to God and say, ‘Lord, I’m a sinner. Help me,’ and
the devil is impotent,” the pope said Sept. 20 during Mass in the Domus Sanctae
Marthae.
“But with the hypocrites he is strong,” Pope
Francis said. “He is strong, and he uses them to destroy, to destroy
people, destroy society, destroy the church.”
The devil’s “battle horse is hypocrisy because he is a
liar. He shows off as a powerful, handsome prince, but inside he’s an
assassin,” the pope said, according to the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore
Romano.
In his homily, Pope Francis looked at key figures discussed
in both of the readings at the Mass: 1 Cor 15:1-11 and Lk 7:36-50.
St. Paul, in the first reading, and the woman who anoints
Jesus’ feet in the Gospel reading both realize they are sinners, the pope said,
but they are moved by love for Jesus.
And Jesus, recognizing their love, “forgives, receives,
is merciful — words we often forget when we speak ill of others,” he
said. “Think about this: We must be merciful like Jesus and not condemn
others.”
The Pharisees are the third group present in the Gospel
story, the pope said. They are shocked, “scandalized,” that Jesus
would allow his feet to be anointed by a woman the Gospel describes as “sinful.”
They were “doctors of the law” who were always
watching Jesus “to see if they could find him in error” or could
“set a trap for him,” the pope said. “They had an attitude
hypocrites often use: They were scandalized. ‘Oh look, what scandal! You cannot
live like that. We have lost all values. Now everyone has a right to come to
church, even those who are divorced, everyone. But where are we?'”
Theirs is “the hypocrisy of the ‘righteous,’ the
‘pure,’ those who believe they are saved through their own merits,” the pope
said. But “Jesus calls the hypocrites ‘whitewashed tombs.’ They look like
beautiful cemeteries, but inside they are putrid and rotten.”
Pope Francis ended his homily by requesting, “Let us
ask Jesus always to protect our church, which is a holy mother but full of
sinning children like us. And may he protect each one of us with his mercy and
forgiveness.”
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