Whitewashed Tombs

Gospel Reflection for August 28, 2024: Memorial of St. Augustine of Hippo

Courtesy of Wikipedia

“Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth. Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.” Matthew 23: 27-28

Our Lord continues His denunciation of the Pharisees in today’s Gospel. This monologue is one of the last that we get from the Lord before His passion as it is temporally situated just days prior to Holy Thursday. In today’s selection, Our Lord uses the analogy of the Pharisees being whitewashed tombs. In first century Jewish culture, a whitewashed tomb was a tomb that was in use, having within it, the remains of someone who had died. The whitewashing was practical for the people, it was to mark the tombs that were in use so that someone would not touch the tomb and become ritualistically unclean. The whitewashing was an outward sign of the death and uncleanliness on the inside.

This is the analogy that Our Lord is using to describe the spiritual state of the Pharisees. On the outside, according to their many prayers and outward show in keeping the law, they look neat and clean, but on the inside, since they are not faithful to the spirit of the law, they are literally dead. The idea of spiritual death is a very serious accusation by Our Lord who knows the hearts of His listeners. He sees that they only keep the letter of the law in order to appear holy and this is why He calls them hypocrites.

They appear righteous on the outside but inside they are dead.

Our Lord is continually exhorting us to not fall into the trap of the Pharisees. It is very easy to appear righteous on the outside by the way we carry ourselves, making sure that people see our “holiness,” appearing to pray much, etc. These prayers and sacrifices are good in themselves but when done with prideful intention, become sins. When we practice our faith for the adulation of the crowd, we are falling into the trap of Pharisees and while we may look clean and holy on the outside, we are filled with dead man’s bones and all kinds of filth on the inside.

The remedy is humility.

We must come to Our Lord with humility if we wish to be alive inside. This was the fatal flaw of the Pharisees; they approached the spiritual life with a sense of pride and entitlement. They saw themselves as Sons of Abraham¹ and they saw themselves as the bar for sanctity. Our Lord reveals something different to them. He challenges them in this moment. Perhaps some of them changed, but what we know from the end of this discourse in the beginning of chapter 26 is that they sought a way to kill Him:

“Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and took counsel together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him.” Matthew 26:3-4

The lesson of this Gospel is an important one. How spiritual lives must be grounded in humility. The humility that is echoed in Our Lord’s words:

“…apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

St. Agustine, whose feast it is today, knew this better than most. He was one of the greatest Theologians to ever live. Immense in his intellect, he still understood the absolute necessity of reliance on God. Within the opening of his great work The Confessions, he writes some of the most well-known words in Christendom, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”² Only the humble can rest in God as He invites only those who will rely on His grace for sustenance.

Either we rely on Him in the spiritual life, or we become whitewashed tombs.

1. John 8:39.

2. St. Augustine, The Confessions, Bk. I, Ch. I.