Pope Francis suggests these Bible readings to fight hypocrisy

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In his message on Wednesday, Pope Francis rejected the hypocrisy that forbids telling the truth, and in support of his teaching, he turned to several biblical passages.

The main text he reversed is the text of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, where St. Paul tells how St. Peter admonished St. Peter for the distinction between Christians from Judaism and Christians from paganism. The part can be found at Gal 2,11.14.

However, the pontiff suggested that believers meditate on another part of the Bible, this time from the Old Testament.

It is an episode of the Book of the Second Maccabees (2 Mac 6, 24-25) where “the beautiful testimony recounted is that of old Eleazar, who asked him to pretend to have eaten the meat of a victim of pagan deities to save his life. Pretend to eat it, but do not eat it. Or make him eat pork, but in fact eat something else his friends have prepared for him.”

But that God-fearing man answered: ‘Because in our time it is not worth pretending, lest many young men think that Eleazar, of ninety years old, has passed on to pagan customs, they are also by imitating me and I bound by this short rest of life They’re deviating because of me, and I’m drawing a stigma into my old age. What a nice page to think about to get away from hypocrisy! ‘ stressed the pope.

The pontiff also suggested that “If you have a little time today, take Chapter 23 of the Gospel of Saint Matthew And you’ll see how many times Jesus said “hypocrites, hypocrites, hypocrites.” It reveals what hypocrisy is.”

In this part of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus rebukes the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy and warns them that they will be “severely judged.”

Finally, the words of Jesus himself are mentioned, also in the Gospel of Saint Matthew (MT 5,37) where he warns against hypocrisy: “Let your language be: Yes, yes”; ‘insulting’ That what happens from here comes from the evil one.”

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