True worship pleasing to God
Now here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple (Matthew 12, 6)
Jesus took a walk one sabbath day through the cornfields. His disciples were hungry and began to pick ears of corn and eat them. The Pharisees noticed it and said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing something that is forbidden on the sabbath.’ But he said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his followers were hungry – how he went into the house of God and how they ate the loaves of offering which neither he nor his followers were allowed to eat, but which were for the priests alone? Or again, have you not read in the Law that on the sabbath day the Temple priests break the sabbath without being blamed for it? Now here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple. And if you had understood the meaning of the words: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the blameless. For the Son of Man is master of the sabbath.’ (Matthew 12,1-8)
The feast day, the true day of rest, is not so much the one celebrated, like the Sabbath for the Jews. The real feast is Jesus Christ, who is greater than the temple and all the sacrifices made there. Jesus expects not so much exterior sacrifices, but interior goodness which is the true worship pleasing to God. The exhortation to be concerned first of all with what is within one’s heart, rather than how one appears on the outside is always valid. Is your heart more inclined to condemn or save others?
