Gospel (Mt 23,27-32) - At that time, Jesus spoke saying: «Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who are like whitewashed tombs: on the outside they appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all kinds of rot. So too are you: on the outside you appear righteous before people, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the tombs of the righteous, and say: "If we had lived in the time of our fathers, we would not have been their accomplices in shedding the blood of the prophets." Thus you testify, against yourselves, that you are children of those who killed the prophets. Well, you fill the measure of your fathers."

The commentary on the Gospel by Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia

There is a false religious spirit that leads to being scrupulous in external practices, in rites, in traditions, but with a heart without compassion and mercy. The hypocrite is far from God. And the contrast between an exaggerated observance of the ritual law and a total neglect of the moral and solidarity duties that must characterize the life of the believer is striking. It is a warning that concerns everyone, not just the Pharisees. The seventh "woe" concerns the veneration of the prophets and the righteous which the scribes and Pharisees express by building tombs and monuments for them. In reality those prophets were killed by those who behaved similarly to the Pharisees. In this sense they are children of their fathers: with their behavior they kill prophecy. The condemnation lies not in honoring the tombs, but in imitating those who killed the prophets. The evangelist warns Christians that, if they allow a spirit to grow focused only on external, organizational, however superficial aspects, forgetting the heart of faith, they eliminate prophecy in the Church, preventing the Gospel of love from reaching the hearts of men.