Memorial of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

“Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge.” That is a surprising thing to hear, because the scholars of the law are the experts in the law. If you asked them what their goal was, they would have said it was to hand on knowledge: the correct knowledge and understanding of how to live out the law. And yet the Lord charges them with taking away the key.

I think we can see why when we look at his interactions with them. Notice how rarely he tells them that they are wrong. He doesn’t say their understanding or their interpretation is wrong. He always says that their priorities are wrong. They focus on little details and miss the bigger picture. That is his constant refrain: in that focus, they have lost what is important.

When we get too focused on little things, on what is trivial, and ignore the weighty matters, we end up off the path. These people knew perfectly how to tithe even the smallest herbs that the law mentions. But they didn’t know how to love their neighbor. And that is not the path to holiness. That is not the path to salvation.

We can fall into the same trap. We may know every tiny rule of the Church. We may have the perfect image of what the liturgy and all these things should be. We may have it all down pat and know it better than anyone else. And we may be right. We may fundamentally be right.

But if we ignore the true key of knowledge—Christ himself and our relationship with him—if we ignore the two great commandments, the love of God and the love of neighbor, then it makes no difference. The man who has memorized the entirety of the corpus of Christian history in Latin, but does not love his neighbor, is not fundamentally a Christian. We have to keep our focus on the things that are most important.

That doesn’t mean the small things don’t matter. They do. They make a difference. They just don’t make as much of a difference. If we become so focused on understanding and getting the ancillary things right that we miss the bigger things, we can end up where we don’t want to be.

We may have our preferences. We may have little things that we care about, and that’s okay. But we cannot let them take priority in our lives. If we struggle to love God, if we struggle to love our neighbor, if we struggle to show forgiveness, we need to work on that first.

We don’t have to give up the little things, but we must prioritize. Our work must stay focused on coming to know Christ more and more each day, because that is our fundamental priority. He is the true key of knowledge. Once we have found him and taken hold of him, we can walk that path to perfection and begin working on the smaller things.

So let us make sure we have our priorities right. Let us stay focused on Christ, deepening our relationship with him, knowing that he will always lead us to holiness. And he can fix up all the little things along the way.