How to Be Holier Than a Pharisee
Gospel Reflection for March 14, 2025, Friday of the First Week of Lent
I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.
Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.
—Matthew 5:20-26 (NAB-RE)
In a world gone mad, it’s easy to view ourselves as set apart (by the way, “Pharisee” means “set apart”), just for believing the right doctrine. Don’t get me wrong, right doctrine is very important, but right doctrine alone is not enough. God desires our hearts, and we will not be worthy of the Kingdom of God until we have given them to Him. The Pharisees worshipped God with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him.1
It’s tempting to imagine that what makes us holy and acceptable in God’s sight is whether or not we believe the correct doctrine, say certain prescribed prayers, fast, and even tithe. These things are all well and good, and we should indeed practice them. However, all these things were also done by the Pharisees, and in all likelihood they observed them with more rigor than most of us. Our righteousness will never surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees by doing these things alone, for they did the very same things.
So, how do we exceed their righteousness, and so merit the Kingdom of God?
With humility and with pure hearts.
In Luke, Jesus tells the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee.2 In this parable, all the good deeds and orthodoxy of the Pharisee—the fasting, prayers, tithing, and right doctrine—were undone by the single sin of pride. In stark contrast to this kneels the Publican, who lacked all these virtues, but nevertheless humbly begged the mercy of God, and thus walked away justified. If you want your righteousness to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, then dig deep to build a foundation of humility.
In today’s reading, Jesus expounds on His warning by giving a concrete example of loving our neighbor, not just externally, but all the way down to the heart. It’s not enough to avoid externally harming your neighbor, you must forsake even your anger towards them. If you want your righteousness to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, then beg God for the grace of a pure heart, and strive (it takes effort) to truly love both your neighbor and your enemies from your heart, and not just externally.
Yes, you should fast, pray, tithe, and believe right doctrine. But never forget that—even with all these good things—you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven without a humble and pure heart.
Stuart Weiss is the creator of Letters for My Children, a series of heartfelt letters of spiritual advice, instruction, and encouragement from a Catholic father to his beloved children.
Matthew 15:8
Luke 18:9-14
"right doctrine alone is not enough. God desires our hearts, and we will not be worthy of the Kingdom of God until we have given them to Him." Indeed, God desires our hearts absolutely. Long ago in prayerful contemplation of God it was unexpectedly posed to me that if I truly loved God in a manner as intimately, as unqualified, as completely, and as passionately as our Savior loves our Father, I would love God more passionately than even my wife, my children, or indeed anyone else to whom my heart was given here on earth. I wanted to embody this disposition with all of my heart since early childhood but it seemed like an impossible dream for the likes of me. I also realized that the consummately selfless disposition of Jesus with respect to our Father and to us was not only lacking in me but was seemingly light years distant from my expectations of what I was becoming aware were the actual requirements for my entry into Heaven. I could see that my desire for spiritual perfection and even for Heaven itself were so grounded in a selfish desire for the protection of my own welfare rather than that of our God and were, in fact, all about me instead of being concerned with my pleasing and embracing the Person, the needs, and desires of God alone for His sake alone. I subsequently perceived an irrepressible need to promise God that I would approach Him only in a manner both destitute and silent that awaits only knowledge of His presence with me and of His desires rather than tendering mine to Him until He would establish in me the union with Him that I could now see was necessary not only for my Salvation but for entry into what I could now see, even from afar, was my destined and totally unique Sainthood. Little did I realize that the state of destitution required of me was to become one that was to be far more spiritual than physical and involved placing even my most certain expectations, beliefs and convictions at risk in surrendering all of them to God for His sanctification. I was very soon to discover why we call our God "unfathomable" and that for all of my life I had been mistaken in what was actually my pursuit of the understanding of God, which is impossible and always an exercise in pride, with one of knowledge of God . It would be so even for the angels. The greatest surprises for me in all of this has been recognition of the absolute, utterly passionate need of God for our companionship here on earth as well as in eternity and also the unexpected ease with which we can recognize God immediately and incessantly all around us and within us when we allow Him this most simple but absolute latitude of our destitute vulnerability to him in everything, especially in what we identify as spiritual matters. For those who really want to know the secret of loving immersion in the mutual and utterly passionate embrace of God within us and within our Church which will always result in genuine knowledge of Him and His desires, I have found that this is it. Our undertaking of this simple and wholly expectant surrender of everything to our God, which even the most accomplished of our Saviors' Apostles managed to embody, is the way into His heart and His into ours.
🙏🏻 thanks