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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Mt 23:13-22): Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees (...) who say, ‘If one swears by the temple, it means nothing, but if one swears by the gold of the temple, one is obligated.’ Blind fools, which is greater, the gold, or the temple that made the gold sacred? (...) One who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it’."

"You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain" (2nd Commandment of the Decalogue)

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

Today, we consider the 2nd commandment of God’s law: "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain". Positively, we must respect the name of the Lord. Christ reproached scribes and Pharisees for the sacrilegious abuse of the name of God, given that —through an intricate casuistry they had devised— they knew how to find loopholes to crookedly use (always in their profit!) the oath.

As a gift, God has revealed to us His Holy Name: we must keep it in our memory, in a silence of loving worship. However, no other word has been so much abused as the word "God". Just one example: Nazi Germany had "God with us" engraved in German in the belts buckles of Nazi soldiers. Apparently they were honoring the name of God —but actually— they were seriously desecrating it for their own purposes. Such desecrations of His name keep defacing the face of God, to the point of making it unrecognizable.

—Oh my God, I want to worship You by calling many times your "Thrice-Holy" Name, and I wish to raise your sweet name of God-Man: Jesus!