Self-love is, as we have just seen, part of our human nature; but our nature having been corrupted by the Fall, our self-love easily degenerates into a sinful love of self, if it is not limited and regulated by the love of God and of our neighbour.
Application. Do you love God with all your heart? You will very likely answer: “I do indeed love God! Who could help loving so good a God!” But I ask you: Could you not love Him still more? If you do not love Him with every power that you possess, you do not love Him enough. And how do you show your love for God? Have you a horror and hatred of sin? Would you rather die than commit a mortal sin?
Chapter LIX.
THE WOES AGAINST THE PHARISEES, AND THE WIDOW’S MITES.
[Mat. 23, 13 — 39. Mark 12, 41 — 44.]
JESUS, filled with indignation at the hard-heartedness and hypocrisy of the Pharisees, once more, on the eve of His Passion and Death, warned the people against them and pronounced divers woes upon their head. “But woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men, for you yourselves do not enter in, and those that are going in, you suffer not to enter. Woe to you, because you go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte[1], and when he is made, you make him the child of hell twofold more than yourselves. Woe to you, because you tithe mint [2] and anise and cummin and have left the weightier things of the law, judgment and mercy and faith. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat[3] and swallow a camel! You make clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but within you are full of rapine and uncleanness. You are like to whited sepulchres[4] which outwardly appear to men beautiful,
- ↑ Proselyte, i. e. one convert.
- ↑ Tithe mint. Which is not prescribed by the law.
- ↑ Strain out a gnat. i. e. you are particular and rigorous in small insignificant matters, and wholly careless in important matters.
- ↑ Whited sepulchres. Jewish teachers of the law had prescribed that ever)' year before Easter the sepulchres should be whitened so that they could easily be seen by the passers-by, and all danger of uncleanness avoided by them.
