Lent begins next week with a Gospel reading that is often misunderstood by Christians. A leading Catholic writer, who is married to a rabbi, considers how we might faithfully observe Ash Wednesday without scapegoating the Jewish people

“Repent, and believe in the Gospel,” the priest says as he uses his thumb to daub a cross of ashes on our foreheads. More than any other day of the year, on Ash Wednesday we focus our minds on repentance for what is past and begin again to try to live the Gospel. What might that look like?

At Mass we hear a familiar passage from the Gospel of Matthew. “Jesus said to his disciples,” it begins. Then: “Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in Heaven. Whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others.”

So, whatever living the Gospel might mean, it is something very different from what all those hypocrites in the synagogues are doing, right? How many of us leave church, a dusting of ash still on our foreheads, feeling a little smug, proud not to be like those hypocrites in the synagogues?