Hypocrisy and the proper motive for all our actions

In a number of instances, Christ lamented over the hypocrisy of some of the leading Jews of his time. At one point, he said: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the Kingdom of heaven before men. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter." (Mt 22,13) And more “Woe to yous” followed after that.

- Fr. Roy Cimagala

What in the end Christ was trying to tell us in these instances was that if our motive for all our actions is not love for God which will always involve love for everybody else, we cannot avoid falling into self-indulgence and all other forms of selfishness and egoism which we try to hide. In short, we cannot avoid playing the game of hypocrisy.

We need to realize deeply that all honor, praise, and recognition should be given to God alone since he is the source of all good things. If we would just pursue our own idea of what is good, we can only go so far before we end up doing crazy things which we would try to hide or rationalize.