Tuesday, Twenty Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

We have become more aware in recent times of the damage we are doing to the environment. Pope Francis has written a wonderful encyclical on care for our common home. The Scriptures often celebrate the created world as a revelation of God. A glimpse of God can be caught in the natural world that God has created. A little booklet has been written by an Irish Jesuit entitled, ‘Seeing God in a leaf’. That understanding of creation is present both in today’s first reading and in the psalm. The responsorial psalm declares that the heavens proclaim the glory of God and the firmament shows forth the work of God’s hands. According to today’s first reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans, ‘ever since God created he world, his everlasting power and deity … have been there to see in the things he has made’. There is an understanding of the world here which invites us to look deeper than the surface of created things, seeing beyond creation to the Creator. Many poets have had that contemplative view of nature. I am fond of the poem of Joseph Mary Plunkett which begins, ‘I see his blood upon the rose, and in the stars the glory of his eyes’. In the gospel reading, Jesus challenges his host to see deeper, in a different sense. The Pharisee who invited Jesus to his table was preoccupied with the fact that Jesus did not observe traditional Jewish washings before eating. Jesus declares that such external cleanliness is a symbol of a deeper form of cleanliness of mind and heart. What is within is more important than externals. The heart is where God wants to reside and that is what we need to get right. As Jesus says in one of the beatitudes, ‘blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’.

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