Let them alone; they are blind guides (of the blind)

5 AUGUST (Mt 15,1-2.10-14)

True religion is most pure love for man, on the model, the example, the commandment and the law of God that we worship. Sin as its primary fruit has not only turned man away from God, it also made foreigner and stranger, man to man. By some philosophers this turning away was set in a grim statement: “Homo hominis lupus,” a man is a wolf to a man. A man rails against a man to devour, kill, remove and tear him to pieces.

True religion is bringing man back to his truth of origin: the truth toward God and the truth toward himself, his brothers and the whole of creation. If this truth is altered, tampered with, changed or modified, we are always in a false religion, because our relationship with God and with our brothers is false. Religion is always false when it is made to consist in a cult in which this dual truth is absent. It is always false when a man is denied the love he deserves by creation.

Making the most holy and true religion of the earth consist in a barren and empty ritual of infinite ablutions of the body, with no ablution of the soul and spirit, attests to its total falsehood. If then to this falsehood is also added the evasion and modification of the commandments in favour of the lust of the eyes, avarice, of the hoarding of the money of others, relying on the faith of the weak and small; then, not only we are in a false religion, we also are in a religion of sin and serious aberration. In this aberration man is used not served; is exploited and deceived not helped to return to his natural truth.

What Jesus teaches the Pharisees, also applies to each of his disciples. The risk of turning, circumvent, modify the law of love is always at hand. It suffices an impure heart and everything is turned into impurity. It suffices a lustful and stingy, that lets himself be overcome by greed and the Lord is immediately sold to evil. The Judas in religion are many more than you think. They are those who will sell the truth of God and man to their malice and wickedness.

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash (their) hands when they eat a meal.” He summoned the crowd and said to them, “Hear and understand. It is not what enters one’s mouth that defiles that person; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one.” Then his disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He said in reply, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides (of the blind). If a blind person leads a blind person, both will fall into a pit.”

When is religion pure and holy? When a man’s heart is pure and holy. When is a man’s heart pure and holy? When only love for God and the neighbour reigns in it. If we love according to the example that the Lord has left us and every day leaves us, we are of pure religion. If we do not love, we are of the impure, deviated, changed, modified and altered religion. When we are out of the divine word that teaches us how to love, our religion is always not pure. Only true love makes us pure. But not the love we think, but the one the Lord has prescribed us in his Word. Man is not the source of true and pure love. Only God is this source and it has been revealed and delivered us in its entirety by Jesus Christ in words and deeds. The cross is the greatest sign of the truth of his love.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us pure in mind and heart.