Do I strive to live unity of life?
Purity, Jesus says, is not linked to external rites, but is first and foremost connected to interior dispositions. To please God, therefore, it is no use washing one’s hands several times if one then, within the heart, harbors evil feelings such as greed, envy, or pride, or evil intentions such as deceit, theft, betrayal, and slander. Jesus draws attention to ritualism, disconnected to interior life; it can sometimes lead one to neglect, or even justify, in oneself and others, choices and attitudes contrary to charity, which wound the soul and enclose the heart.
One must not, for example, go out of Holy Mass and, still in front of the church, begin to gossip wickedly and mercilessly about everything and everyone. Or to show oneself to be pious in prayer, but dishonest in work, and then treat others with coldness and detachment. This is a double life; one cannot do this. And this is what the Pharisees did.
In acting in this way, the relationship with God is reduced to external gestures, and that person remains impervious to the purifying action of His grace, indulging in thoughts, messages, and behavior without love. We are made for something else.
“We do not lead a double life, but a unity of life, which is simple and strong and in which all our actions are united."
“When we respond generously to this spirit, we acquire a second nature. Without realizing it, we think of our Lord all day long, and we feel an impulse to put God into everything, for without him, nothing would have any attraction. The time then comes when we can't tell where prayer ends and where work begins; for our work is also prayer, contemplation, a true life of mystical union with God without any oddities. This is ‘good divinization’.
The sincerity of our devotion must lead us to work and fulfill our daily duties cheerfully, even if they are hard. There should be a close union between the supernatural inner reality and our outward human undertakings.
“Work and piety are intimately united as two aspects of one and the same reality. This is the only way for us to become saints. Without work, interior life cannot be sustained, and if, we lacked piety or were not continually attentive to our Lord, neither talent nor knowledge, no effort whatsoever, would suffice, for our Lord would leave us."
Let us ask ourselves, then: Do I live my faith consistently, that is, what I do in church, do I try to do outside in the same spirit? By my sentiments, words, and deeds, do I accomplish what I decide in prayer? Let us think about this.
May Mary, Mother, be most pure and help us to make our lives a unified worship pleasing to God.
Video: