So it was with the Pharisee in this day's gospel. He looked upon himself with great complacency. He used, or misused, the traditions in which he had been brought up, to the purpose of persuading himself that perfection lay in merely answering the demands of society. He professed to pay thanks to God, but he hardly apprehended the existence of any direct duties on his part towards his Maker.
He thought he did all that God required, if he satisfied public opinion. To be religious, in the Pharisee's sense, was to keep the peace towards others, to take his share in the burdens of the poor, to abstain from gross vice, and to set a good example. His alms and fastings were not done in penance, but because the world asked for them; penance would have implied the consciousness of sin; whereas it was only Publicans, and such as they, who had anything to be forgiven. And these indeed were the outcasts of society, and despicable; but no account lay against men of well-regulated minds such as his: men who were well-behaved, decorous, consistent, and respectable. He thanked God he was a Pharisee, and not a penitent."
John Henry Newman, The Religion of the Pharisees, Dublin 1856
"Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is their hypocrisy."
Luke 12:1
"I really fear that most men called Christians, whatever they may profess, whatever they may think they feel, whatever warmth and illumination and love they may claim as their own, would go on almost as they do, neither much better nor much worse, if they believed Christianity to be a fable. When young, they indulge their lusts, or at least pursue the world's vanities; as time goes on, they get into a fair way of business, or other mode of making money; then they marry and settle; and their interest coinciding with their duty, they seem to be, and think themselves, respectable and religious men; they grow attached to things as they are; they begin to have a zeal against vice and error; and they follow after peace with all men.
Such conduct indeed, as far as it goes, is right and praiseworthy. Only I say, it has not necessarily any thing to do with religion at all; there is nothing in it which is any proof of the presence of religious principle in those who adopt it; there is nothing they would not do still, though they had nothing to gain from it, except what they gain from it now: they do gain something now, they do gratify their present wishes, they are quiet and orderly, because it is their interest and taste to be so; but they venture nothing, they risk, they sacrifice, they abandon nothing on the faith of Christ's word."
John Henry Newman, The Ventures of Faith, St. Mary's Oxford, 25 July 1836
"The problem Newman addresses here is with those long time believers who have grown in the faith, and may exhibit many of its gifts, but stop there without bearing the kind of fruit of which they are capable. And why do they do this? Simply because they never grow to fully love Him and His, more than they love their own fears, desires, and selves.
They always hold some better portion of themselves back and in reserve. They love God as they think that they must only in order to avoid punishment and to be comfortable, while being blinded to their own sinful shortcomings, never fully growing into the love which is the substance and the salvation of their true selves.
And in the worst case they become self-righteous, being proud in their gifts and their selection as they think of it in their own minds. They may harbor private hatreds, sins against the Spirit, judging others and seeing admonitions to take up the cross of His obedience with love as intended for all those others, but not for themselves.
They are imbued with the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy and spiritual pride. They seek to manage God's reach, and fix His presence down and manage it like a butterfly pinned in a collection, and call it a 'traditional' preference for things as they think they have been and ought to be. They wish to calcify the life of the Spirit in His church. And this is the road to a dwindling of the spiritual life, and a gradual erosion of faith as a vital element of our every action."
Jesse, Obedience Without Love, 5 April 2017
Confidence faltered in the markets today, and stocks fell.
What caused this break? On the whole people are being to see through the fraud, and the lies, which have been the mainstay of the financial system for some time now.
Gold and silver bounced a bit, in their traditional observance of an option expiration in stocks releasing the miners from the grift.
VIX rose sharply. There is the faltering confidence part.
The Dollar chopped around, but finished unchanged once again.
The DXY strength is mostly an artifact of the hapless incompetency of European leadership.
The war in the Mideast is not going to plan. It never did, despite the bluster and bravado of the Pirates of Perfidy.
We seem to be heading into a very difficult situation, made significantly worse by official corruption, theft and increasingly clumsy deception.
This too shall pass, but not easily.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
Have a pleasant weekend.
