Wednesday, July 10: “Misrepresented Essence”

Matthew 23: 27: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”

Does anyone going through a cemetery which has just been spruced up for Undas fail to understand that these freshly-painted mausoleums are still, at their core, just tombs? Even the finest examples of such, from the Taj Mahal to the Rizal Monument at the Bagumbayan and the rest, are essentially fancy crypts. The Pharisee’s pretenses couldn’t change what was inside them. Sadly, the only One who could bring life and change to those dry bones, they rejected.