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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Saturday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Mt 23:1-12): Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice..."

The Christian faith is "per-formative"

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, Christ denounces a serious distortion of the authentic religion: "They say but they do not do". It is the "evaporation of faith": theory without practice. The Christian message is not only "informative", but should also be "per-formative". The Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known, it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The image of God must be conceived in us; our conversion in Jesus must take place every day.

Before “demonstrating” our faith, it must be “presented”: it is a change of our being. Our faith, that reaches us as the Word, must become again in ourselves a word where our own life may now be also articulated. Faith goes in the first place from the word to the idea, but it must always come back from the idea to the word and to the action.

—O Lord, let faith transform me until it can be said that I have been “born” again.