Our Teacher and Guide, our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ had just finished speaking when a Pharisee invited Him into his house for dinner. As at then, before sitting at the table, there was a very elaborate washing of hands done with no spiritual value. His host who was supposed to focus on the act of generosity and the goodness of accomodating Jesus in his home as a mark of gratitude to God all of a sudden swung in surprise into the external action that Christ has displayed of not washing his hands.

Our Lord got provoked and was disgusted with his action and as such, he endangered his initial act of kindness and generosity. At the conclusion of today’s gospel passage, the Lord suggests that charity is a key to spiritual cleanliness. When you give alms everything will be clean for you. We need to have faith and be convinced of what we are doing. Charity according to scriptures removes a multitude of sins. Let us become clean both inside and outside for cleanliness is next to godliness.

St.Paul in his apostolic exhortation to the Romans captures the kind of faith we must imbibe. In today’s first reading, he says, “we may know God but fail to honour him. “ The Pharisee in today’s gospel knew Jesus . He welcomed him to his house as a guest but his action shows he was far from salvation. The Lord was in his home but not his heart.

Dearly beloved in Christ, our faith should lead us to a deeper faith and love for Christ. Our faith will wax stronger when we devote ourselves to worship God who has given all things to men. We should render everything back to him who is the maker of all things both visible and invisible. This is the faith we need to profess always.

Fraternity without absorption, union without fusion. It had always been a notion of mine that sanity is like a clearing in the jungle where the humans agree to meet from time to time and behave in certain fixed ways that even a baboon could master, like Englishmen dressing for dinner in the tropics.-St. Wilfrid pray for us. Amen.