IS our religion vain ostentation or sincere practice?  This is one of those questions we must ask ourselves time and again, to avoid reducing our religiosity into an empty caricature of our faith. Matthew’s lengthy tirade against the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy in his chapter 23 (31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, 23:1-12) is rather symptomatic of the complex situation of the Jewish-Christian community itself of the 80s A.D.  It is not simply mirroring the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees in the 30s.  In fact, today “we are the Pharisees!”