We need to cleanse ourselves from all evil inside of our heart. This work is essential for life and the spirituality of the true disciple of Jesus Christ.
“You are like whitewashed tombs: they look beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all?” (Matthew 23, 27).
Jesus continues to call attention to the life of the teachers of the law and the Pharisees. He draws attention mainly to hypocrisy, evil ‘ a trademark of these groups of followers of the Jewish law. That’s because they’re good pundits of the law and know all of the Sacred Scriptures, but, in fact, live only appearances, and pretend to be what, in fact, they are not.
The word of God coming today to show us that we cannot fall into the terrible temptation to be as “whitewashed tombs”. Let’s go to the cemetery and see that Tomb well-prepared, pretty, painted, filled with decorations on the outside, so on. But what’s inside it? The bones that have dried already and the body that has rotted.
Sometimes, we want and we live like this because we care too much about the shell, the appearance, the outside and we forget to take care of the essentials, we forget to take care of the heart and what’s inside. We clean well on the outside, take many baths per day, sometimes lengthy baths (which well be able to do that!). However, many times, we forget to have the same application to take care of what is within us.
How many old things, numb, how much “rubble”, how many broken things that are no longer anything within us that need to be purified. We need to cleanse ourselves from all evil inside our hearts. This work is essential for life, is the spirituality of the true disciple of Jesus Christ.
The disciple of Jesus doesn’t concern him or her self worry just with the outside, nor does the outside become his or her primary concern. We have to be good to others, we need to be clean, tidy and so on. However, for God what counts is not what appears, but what is for the Lord that counts not what people see on the outside, but what’s inside all of us.
That the word of God perform in us the grace to purify our heart!
God bless you!
Fr. Roger Araujo
New song community priest, journalist and collaborator of the new song Portal.