Gospel of 13 October 2020
Tuesday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 11:37-41
Give thanks for what you have and it will all be clean
Jesus had just finished speaking when a Pharisee invited him to dine at his house. He went in and sat down at the table. The Pharisee saw this and was surprised that he had not first washed before the meal. But the Lord said to him, ‘Oh, you Pharisees! You clean the outside of cup and plate, while inside yourselves you are filled with extortion and wickedness. Fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside too? Instead, give alms from what you have and then indeed everything will be clean for you.’
Reflexion
There is a strange tendency nowadays to think that the external aspects of a thing matter very little, while the “inside” is all that counts. For example: as long as you’re “a good person on the inside,” it doesn’t matter what you look like, how you dress, how you speak, or even what religion you profess. Isn’t this what our Lord is pushing in today’s gospel?
Well, let us not take our Lord’s words out of context. He was certainly not dismissing the external practices of His Jewish faith as something unimportant but merely reminding the Pharisees that they should also pay equal attention to the interior disposition without forgetting to observe the external rules. Both inside and outside are important.
We need to remember that the outside often reveals to us just what is in the heart. A good person will dress modestly, speak respectfully, because this is a reflexion of what is in his heart, invisible to men’s eyes but visible to God’s.
You often hear this platitude: “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” But the Church disagrees. In Mediaeval times, the Church would spent enormous sums of money on Gospel books with heavy bindings of gold, silver, and jewels, encase the holy relics of the saints in jewel encrusted reliquaries, build magnificent Gothic and Baroque edifices because it was perfectly obvious that these “things” contained something special dedicated to the glory of God and deserved our utmost veneration.
The sacred liturgy, the Mass, holds God Himself, the Word made flesh, His incarnate Body and Blood in the Eucharist. If this inner reality is true, should not the way we celebrate the Mass be glorious, majestic, beautiful, solemn, reverent? We should be able to judge this book by its resplendent cover, that is, the Mass by its music, its ceremonies, the vestments worn by the priests and the sacred vessels used in the holy sacrifice. In other words, we should be able to see the heart in the actions.
Nowadays we hear a lot of emphasis on not paying too much attention to the externals in the Mass but just remembering that “Jesus is present.” That is disingenuous. Throughout history, Christians have offered the best they can to God in the liturgy, in order that the souls of worshipers might be better disposed to adore and glorify the Lord.
Of course it is true that God does not need these things because He is perfect and complete, and all good things already come from Him. But these things are needed by us. This is the sense in which St. Thomas Aquinas insists that the liturgy is not for God’s sake but for ours. The liturgy benefits us by offering our souls to Him as our ultimate end, by filling our minds with the truth of His presence and our hearts with the fire of His love.
So the next time someone suggests to you that externals do not matter, remember what Aristotle says, it is the appearances of a thing that point to its nature and substance. The Catholic Church has to care not only about the truth of realities but about appearances. Human beings come to know the truth through their senses; they cannot have concepts without visible signs. In our Catholic faith, in the encounter with our Lord in His life, death, and resurrection, our senses, memories, imaginations, and emotions play as important a role as our intellects and wills. Yes, though internal conversion is necessary for our salvation, externals are equally important and they do matter.