Word to the Wise
Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - Tuesday in the 28th Week in Ordinary Time
[Gal 5:1-6 and Luke 11:37-41]"Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?" [Luke] "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love." [Galatians]
Jesus' exasperated words to the Pharisee who had invited him to dinner and who protested that Jesus had not followed a ritual of washing are a good shorthand way to look at our own lives! "Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?" When St. Paul speaks of "faith working through love," he is also speaking to the "inside" of the person.
I once preached a retreat to some Dominican sisters on the theme of "Dominican inside, Dominican outside." My basic idea, taken from the words of Jesus quoted above, was that only when we have interiorized the values of our Dominican tradition can we claim to be telling the truth about ourselves as Dominicans, no matter how much we observe the rules and rituals of Dominican life! We can't just "wear the company outfit, and sing the company song."
Jesus could read the human heart and did not like what he saw in that Pharisee's heart, no matter how scrupulously the presecribed washing ritual was observed. What connection exists between what is in our own hearts and our outward actions, between our "inside" and our "outside?" Is there "faith working through love?" AMEN