Inside you are filled with plunder and evil

14 OCTOBER (Lk 11,37-41)

God, who is charity, who is divine and eternal love, wrote this truth in every man. Man is a man according to the truth of nature, if he is perpetually a visible image of the God who made him and who is the purest love. He will live the truth of his being, if he loves God and his neighbour with the same divine and eternal love to be draw constantly from his Creator and Lord. Love of God and love of the neighbour have been so wonderfully united, joined together in one love by the Apostle John.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit. Moreover, we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world. Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother (1Jn 4,7-21).

Reducing the religion of the most pure and holy love to some ablutions to be done before taking food and judging the truth of the relationship with God and with the brothers in similar things, it is at least aberrant. It is the replacement of everything with nothing, of Heaven with the earth, of the most precious thing with the most vile. Jesus came instead to put back on the lamp stand the truth about man, which is the most pure love of the Father, with which we are called to serve God and the brothers. It is the heart that must be washed, cleansed, sanctified and renewed. It is the mind that needs to abandon every distortion of the truth to let be enlightened by the powerful light that flows from the revelation. A magnificent liturgy, embellished beyond belief, is a thing of hypocrites if the heart that celebrates it is filled with robbery and iniquity, envy and perjury, hatred and resentment towards one’s neighbour and the desire for the destruction of God’s truth in hearts of his brothers.

After he 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.

The truth of a man is his heart. Everything that pollutes must be removed from it. The heart must be poor, free, emptied of all hypocrisy, love of money, avarice, licentiousness, insatiable greed and things like that. The heart is purified in only one way: by making of our wealth alms to the needy, the destitute, those who are in serious material need. These are the ablutions pleasing to the Lord. They are the ones that purify us, free us and make us holy before our God. Instead, the heart of the Pharisees was full of greed and wickedness. They washed their hands but hid the dirt in their inner selves. They looked beautiful on the outside, but inside there was every transgression of the commandments and especially the total absence of true love. Either we purify daily religion purifying the heart, or no light of salvation will shine for us in the world. We are darkness that spread darkness.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us of  pure and holy religion.