In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen.

Unless your justice exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Well, like many of my sermons, we'll start with the bad news and then move on to the good news.

In my country, there are many, many scandals within the Catholic Church, as well as your countries.

And I think it's very easy for laypeople to look at the scandals of the hierarchy, which are real, by the way.

In fact, they're greatly underreported.

One of the articles I recently read from my friend, Monseigneur Jean Gamalca, shows that-reporting of clergy abuse is about four or five-fold,

four- or five-fold what is actually reported by the bishops regarding clergy abuse.

So it's much worse than all of the damage control we were taught to do in seminary.

Many lay people can look at this and then say,

well, if they don't, if the hierarchy doesn't live it,

I don't have to live it.

If the hierarchy, if the Catholic clergy doesn't teach X, Y, and Z are wrong,

even though the Catholic Church for 2,000 years taught it's wrong,

then I can do it.

And all of these issues are on the heads of the priests and the bishops for not teaching the right thing.

Well, we have the answer right here in today's gospel.

Jesus, when he became man, the only true hierarchy on earth at that time was the Jewish hierarchy,

and they were extremely, extremely corrupt.

And so there was probably a lot of the same banter back then of people looking at the hypocrisy,

looking at the scandals and saying, if they don't live it, why do I have to live it?

And this is where our Lord Jesus Christ simply says today,

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