This is Scott Hahn, and I want to welcome you to the Road to Amas, a podcast from the St. Paul Center.

How can we overcome our current crisis of faith? The same way we overcome our crisis of loneliness,

through friendship. At least that's what the early Christians would say. Learn more in Mike Aquilinas,

friendship and the fathers. Visit our show notes at St. Paul's Center.com, to Amas, I want to begin a discussion on hypocrisy, a term that Jesus uses to address the Pharisees.

This topic was sparked by the daily readings from last Monday's Letters from Home podcast.

So I want to begin there, but I want to start off by pointing out the obvious, that when

Jesus refers to the Pharisees and the scribes as hypocrites, This term is one of the most important words that Jesus

ever uses, but it is also the single most misunderstood word in Jesus' sermons. So I want to invite

you to consider the fact that hypocrisy means almost exactly the opposite of what people suppose.

Stay with me.

Today we're going to be looking at the Monday of the 21st week in ordinary time.

That would be August 23rd.

We have three readings, as is the custom.

The first one is taken from Paul's letter to the Thessalonians.

First Thessalonians 1.

The second reading, the responsorial psalm, is taken from the second of the last Psalm in

the Psalter, Psalm 149.

And I hope to spend more time today looking at the third reading, and that is the gospel, according to Matthew,

taken from chapter 23. So let's back up and look briefly at what Paul tells the Thessalonians.

It's the opening of the epistle, and First Thessalonians is most likely the very first of Paul's

letters, written around 48 or 49 AD. And so we read Paul, Sylvannis

and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians. Well, who is Sylvannis? That's Paul and Silas.

...