From the responsorial psalm: “Let your mercy come to me, O LORD, your salvation according to your promise. Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke (Lk 11:37-41)
After Jesus had spoken, a Pharisee invited him to dine at his home. He entered and reclined at table to eat. The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal. The Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees! Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil. You fools! Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside? But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.”
As a guest in the home of a Pharisee, Jesus doesn’t observe the ritual washing before the meal. His harsh response to the Pharisee’s amazement at this calls out the evil he sees in this customary practice. Washing itself doesn’t seem like a bad idea, yet the extreme focus on keeping up appearances is what Jesus criticizes. And there’s more to come. In tomorrow’s Gospel, Jesus continues to denounce the practices of the Pharisees that are for the sake of appearance. Even as he condemns the inner spiritual state of the Pharisees, Jesus has an antidote for their illness and for ours: give alms and be made clean.
God, you fashioned my entire being, inside and outside. As my maker, be my aid in purging my interior self of any evil to make room for you. Jesus says, “Give alms.” In giving alms, help me be a cheerful giver of not only your material gifts but also your mercy. “Give and gifts will be given to you,” Jesus says. Guide me, Lord, throughout the day and lead me not in the way of fools but in the way of a heart made clean by doing your will. “The soul of the just person is nothing else,” Saint Teresa says, “but a paradise where the Lord says he finds his delight.” Saint Teresa, pray for us!
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
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