In the first reading St. Paul vigourously defends the message he has preached to the early Galatian Christians. He was clearly upset that some of them were deserting their faith. He reminded them, "The Gospel I preached is not of human origin". In the Gospel Jesus is being subtly accused of not teaching the Law of God in its fullness. He responded to the challenge with a story which, as we say nowadays, "has it all".

Perhaps, without fully realising it, some of the Pharisees had so exalted their God that they had effectively removed him from the daily happenings of life. Being human and sinful themselves, though they might have rejected such a description, their exalted doctrine exposed them to the danger of regarding themselves as unchallengeable, God like harsh judges of others. They so stressed the obligation to consecrate a day to the Lord that they were in danger of blinding people to the most obvious obligations to their fellow human beings.

In a masterly story Jesus shows how a supposedly irreligious man was totally open to the Second commandment of the Law and therefore to the First Commandment as a consequence. Maybe Jesus is warning us of the danger of becoming so fascinated by the good we do in one area that we can endanger our realationship with God and embark on a path that leads us away from Him and from our fellow men and women.