It’s what we’re like in the hidden part of our being that matters most. We can do all in our power to give the appearance of piety, but unless the heart is pure it really will not count for anything.
As I have said on several occasions, I came from a tradition that emphasized a personal holiness code. One could easily determine whether he or she, or for that matter one’s neighbor, met the code by making a few simple observations. Clothing and hairstyle were primary signs of holiness. Men were to be clean shaven and wear long sleeves year round. Shorts were never allowed, not even at the lake. The women were never to wear pants or cut their hair. Also important was abstaining from the use of alcohol and tobacco. Lastly, the content and manner of speech were considered in the assessment of holiness.
Although I was a young man barely 19 at the time, I thought that there was something hokey about determining whether one made the mark as a Christian based on outward appearances. Certainly scripture indicated otherwise. I secretly considered the holiness code to be pharisaical and ignorant in the true light of the holy writ. It didn't take me long, as I grew to adulthood, to find an ecclesial community that looked for holiness in other places.
Over the years it has been a blessing to learn that God deals with the heart—with the innermost being of each person. Who is it that can judge the person in his or her heart? I know of only two judges and both are essential for us to live a life that speaks as a witness of interior holiness. First, God is our judge. We must never stray far from the realization that nothing is hidden from God, and secondly we are our own judges. After all, other than God, who knows our hearts better? The interior of the human being is a deep and mysterious world. When we search deeply enough we find the one in whose image we were made; however, rather than peer inwardly to find the truth of our being we are to turn our gaze outward. The heart, the innermost aspect of our lives, paradoxically lies in our relationship to the world we encounter each day.
Although I’ve pointed out a kind of legalistic religion that exists in various forms, the most insidious form of hypocrisy is not always as easy to detect. It is not so much a hypocrisy that deals with what it considers to be outward impurities, indecency, and various violations of good clean "holy-roller" living, but it is the inner blindness of the soul. It is a kind of spiritual sickness that refuses to see the need for salvation, but instead understands itself as righteous and pure already, and perhaps even goes as far as to indict the truly righteous on the grounds that they fail to be holy. I've found such indictments typically to be polemical in origin. The failure, they say, is in being too liberal, too conservative, too traditional, too contemporary, too moderate, or maybe just too intelligent.
What is it that we are to do in order to please God, in order to be holy? Only God has the power to make us into something holy and pleasing. Do we not pray along with the psalmist, "Create a pure heart in me O God"? Our own righteousness tends to fail miserably anyhow, and there's always the evil sort of hypocrisy that leads to the murder of the righteous, which is really the message that today’s gospel reveals to us. Left to our own attempts at being holy we will end up at the extreme opposite. To be holy we must lay out our hearts before Jesus Christ and allow the power of the Holy Spirit to begin transforming us.
In every instance of interior evil or religious hypocrisy that has grown to have a noticeably foul smell, there has been a failure involving the immersion of the person in righteous things—here I add that it is righteous works that qualify as the stuff that transforms the heart, and this is the point of the first reading today.
If ever you doubted, or if you ever felt daunted and unable to attain holiness for any reason whatsoever, it may be that there was a failure to plunge into the waters of good works. I speak as one who knows. Anyone who puts himself or herself completely at the service of his or her brothers and sisters is well on the way to overcoming even the most tenacious of sinful habits.
By immersion in God’s work we learn also to say, “Lord, your grace is sufficient for me.” All that I care about when I lie down to retire at the end of a long day, is that what I have done that day has been pleasing to God. My failures and sins disappear when I turn from concern over whether I'm making the mark to doing something that actually makes a mark, even a scribble at first. In our work we allow the One who created all things to create a pure heart in us.
Very, very good points. What a fine bakery you have here, DDW. Yes, He sees into the heart, and that is also true for those He created who aren't Christian.
As I was first reading here today, tho', I was reminded of my best friend through high school. I think Martha would've been a holy kid had she had no religion, she was just that type, but she and her family were strict Mormons. She had lost one sister and her mother, but with her uncle living in, mine still made the 12th mouth at the dinner table.
As the salad bowl came to me first (as guest), I, never having had salad, thought what a wonderful treat. I took as much as if had it been just my mother and I as usual. Martha looked at her newest sister with a big smile, and I smiled right back. Then she whispered, "Uh, the salad has to go around the table, Honora. Can ya put some back?" What a great lesson, not only that night, but now.
Whatever we might take for ourselves, be it salad, friendship or grace, we should remember that it has to cover at least 11 others.. maybe if we remain the 12th to receive, we can know for sure that we've done some of what we can. We are not likely even then to go without salad (how often has one of the 11 seen we had none, and split his?), but if we do, it'll be enough to look around and see 11 happy, healthy faces.
Posted by: Honora | August 30, 2006 at 08:10 AM