Tuesday of 22nd Week, even numbered year
“You blind guides, straining out gnats and swallowing camels!”
“Alas for you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay your tithe of mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the Law-justice, mercy, good faith! These you should have practiced, those not neglected.”
The hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, which Jesus denounces in this Gospel passage, resides in the fact that they are attached to rituals, thus essentially forgetting the beauty of the human person.
In order to enter into the knowledge of Jesus, we need to recognise how weak our way of seeing things is, and to contemplate the splendour of Jesus’ Infinite Love. And so we discover just how far we are from Him.
If we ask ourselves questions, we see the desire we have of a vain human glory appearing.
Jesus draws our attention towards what is even more serious : ’Abandoning justice, mercy and fidelity.’
We need to enter an inner life, a life of prayer opening up to others. Taking away from our heart what stops it from loving him and finding God through faith. We look for God where He is not, and we pass next to a hidden treasure in us, one which we cannot see. We carry God within ourselves, in exactly the place we aren’t looking for Him!
And so God’s mercy becomes our way of Life. Thus our common life turns into a concern for our neighbour, and it is clothed with justice.
“Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of cup and dish and leave the inside full of extortion and temperance.”
We can hide our life from men but we cannot hide the secret of our heart from God, He dwells there. Jesus asks us to become aware of things and this of utmost importance.
Others help us to have a realistic look at what is going on around us, even so we need to listen to them. Informed, and led by the Holy Spirit, we can turn around on ourselves and enter the deep parts of our heart.
And so the eyes of the body do not perceive a light of day, or any other light, but an inner light, much brighter, which fills everything with all its intensity. This light is not above our thoughts as the sky spreads above the earth it is itself the secret given to me, and I am its work. In order to know this Light, I need to know the truth, the link of Love- charity knows this Light.
It is Jesus’ Passion which has opened up this window for us, because of the hardening of our hearts! And so first of all we wish to turn towards our sisters and brothers in a lovely act of Love coming from our God!
“Blind Pharisee! Clean the inside of cup and dish first so that it and the outside are both clean.”
Jesus opens up for us a path of humility and love, he hollows out a royal path for us, a whole new inner path. It is always about the fundamental distinction between the inner and outer dimension of our life : ’You purify the outside of the cup and dish, but the inside is filled with cupidity and intemperance.’
The inside cannot see with a bare eye and the outside can lead to confusion.
Faced with an outer life ’in order’ we may deduce that the inside one is a happy one! Jesus manifests how much this attitude is a lie : ’First of all purify the inside of the cup so that the outside becomes pure.’
Saint Raphael Arnaiz Baron says:-
’If God is not in our soul it is because we don’t want Him to be there. We have such a heap of attentions, distractions, tendencies, desires, vanities, presumptions, we have so many people in us that God gets further and further away. As soon as we wish, God fills the soul with such light that you’d have to be blind so as not to see it. Does a soul wish to live according to God? Let it get rid of everything."
Our desire is to follow Jesus, humble and gentle of Heart, in order to come to his height by going through the Cross.