Galatians 5:1-6 / Luke 11:37-41

Dear brothers and sisters,

On this feast day of Saint Teresa of Ávila, the Gospel of Luke presents Jesus dining at the home of a Pharisee.

The Pharisees were Jews who were more concerned with fulfilling religious traditions than with pleasing God by practicing charity and sharing their goods with the poor.

Washing hands before meals was a religious tradition. Failure to do so made a person impure.

Of course, personal hygiene and cleanliness are very important and promote individual and collective health. We saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Jesus tells the Pharisee and us today that we need to be more concerned with inner cleanliness, of the heart, than with outer cleanliness, of the body, of things. It is no use being clean on the outside and dirty on the inside, with theft and evil. God sees and knows all things, our attitudes.

The best way to purify ourselves internally is to practice charity and share our goods with the poor.

In the reading, the apostle Paul tells the Galatians that Christians believe they will achieve salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and not by fulfilling the Law of the Jews, such as circumcision.

Circumcision was an important law for the Jews. It was an external sign of belonging to God, to the people of Israel.

Before embracing the Christian faith, the Jew was a slave to the Law and believed that he would be saved by fulfilling the Law. But when he became a Christian, when he believed that he would be saved by faith in Christ, he was freed from the Law.

Christians should not regress to the stage of slavery to the Law, in the false expectation of salvation by fulfilling the Law.

May Saint Teresa of Ávila intercede for us!