Wednesday, August 30 : Saint Charles de Foucauld

“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. (Mk 13:15) Let us beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, of the exaggerated attachment to external observances of human institution, to vain ceremonies, to a beautiful external order which takes all our care, an attachment which produces little, forgetting the interior life, which ends up by causing the inside of the cup to be neglected in order to clean the outside, by making us hypocrites, bleached sepulchers and at the same time small, petty, minds, incapable of any high conception and attached with extreme force to nothings, minutiae, childishness… Let us beware of the leaven of Herod, of the leaven of the Sadducees, another Gospel speaks of laxity, sensuality, softness, of the love of well-being, and the search for one’s ease. The obvoious consequence is a love of money, wealth, honors, greatness; the Pharisees say goodbye to truth, simplicity, goodness, mercy, humility, to all greatness of soul… The Sadducees have a horror of poverty, the abjection of penance, the cross, of humility, and no more than the Pharisees do they know goodness or mercy… Both replace love of God and love of neighbor with self-love alone… it is rather the bewilderment of the heart by sensuality… These two sects represent the two main pitfalls of all human life and particularly of religious life: let us guard ourselves with great care from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees!

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team