Priest Savatie Baștovoi
`Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees` (Luke 12,1).
The yeast of the Pharisees is the pleasure to present yourself as righteous before the people. He did not say it plainly `be on your guard against the hypocrisy of thw Pharisees`, but `be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy.`
In the same way the dough rises and grows the wish to present yourself as righteous has no limits, rising till the skies and ending up by crucifying Christ.
The spiritual law shows that all the Saint consider themselves sinful and the sinful consider themselves righteous. That is why Christ said:
`I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinful to repentance.` (Matthew 9,13).
Saint Paul the Apostle says: `the first among the sinful is me`(1 Timothy 2, 15) and all the prayers which we have from the Saints are some real confessions so for so many of our contemporaries who are possessed by the spirit of their own rightness these prayers seems exaggerated with the rows of sins they present. That is why they don`t read them anymore for they say they `have God in their hearts.`
Look at those who rule the world, these spotless who fight against the corruption of the others to install justice on earth being beyond any suspicion. While the Saints and Christ in person teach us to fight against the evil from inside ourselves refraining from judging our brothers, the rulers of this world urge us to snitch one another, to look for the evil inside the others, as nobody snitches himself, considering himself righteous.
If the Saints see only their own sins, the sinful see only their qualities. The fool man whom will he love the most? The one who reminds him that he is sinful or the sinful who praises him? Of course, the flattering sinner. That is how the sinful and the bad people began to say with pride that God lives in themselves and they don`t need any church, while all the saints are in the Church of the Lord.
The Scripture come to discourage these false righteous men first when it tells them that Christ did not come for the righteous but for the sinful (for those who consider themselves sinful)
Then we see that the man, from an image of God can darken himself so badly that he becomes a shelter of the evil spirits and he even identifies himself with Satan like in the case of Antichrist, who will be a man born from a woman, but who will be resemble perfectly Satan in his evilness and will do his work
The apostles of Antichrist have come into the world and you see them sitting on thrones and giving daringly some offending orders against people and even against Christ. They are the masters of the entrances and exits, they own the food and heat, the sale and the purchase. Their `righteousness` has proudly risen over the Righteousness of the Church, ordering to the Saints when and how they are allowed to bring their oblations to Christ. Stay away of their dough because as a little yeast leavens the whole dough, the slightest obedience showed to these antichrists will make you be like them.
Keep the bond between each other as the devil means schismatic. The Church is a reunion around Christ Who has the power and the reign, the kingdom and the glory for ever!
