Lust after evil things…  fornication… murmuring… Sounds like the most common description of everyday life in the so-called post-Christian world. The first thing to clarify here is that there is no post-Christian world. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and this means that everything His, He has all authority in heaven and on earth.

False prophets come in sheep’s clothing. They look like sheep – but inside they are ravenous wolves. They are like trees that look beautiful on the outside – but their fruit shows that they are rotten on the inside.

False prophets usually have no difficulty in deceiving people. That is why there is never a shortage of false prophets, past, present, or future. In the past, they had to wear rough robes, eat black bread and drink plain water, and wander around homeless. Today, they dress in designer suits, live in luxurious mansions, and travel on private jets. But their fruit is still the same: they mislead people, tempting them to abandon the narrow path that leads to life and walk with them on the broad way that ends in hellfire.

Once, after a funeral, an old, bearded, gruff-voiced fisherman said to me: “Those funerals with a priest are really beautiful!” I then asked him what the beautiful part was that he liked so much. He replied: “Well, when you said, directly and without any twists: “The wages of sin is death!” Yeah, that’s right, I know it is!”

That made me smile – because at first glance it’s quite difficult to find anything beautiful in those words. But when you think about it a little – why not? Because the whole verse sounds like this: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says: “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

To find out what something is, it is worth asking what its opposite is. What is the opposite of righteousness? The opposite of righteousness is injustice, falsehood, and craftiness. So, living in righteousness means, first of all, that we must resolutely renounce all these evils.

Saint Peter writes in today’s Epistle: “The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers.” In fact, it is a quote from Psalm 34: “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears are open unto their cry.”

Saint Peter knew how true these words were. But he also knew something else: he knew, he had personally experienced, that contrary to what we as humans would expect, the Lord looks with a gracious, merciful heart even upon sinners and comes to their aid as soon as they cry out to Him in repentance. Peter knew that the Lord hears our heartfelt prayers even when our words say otherwise.