Homily for the Memorial of Saint Augustine

Jesus continues to express His righteous anger toward the scribes and the Pharisees. Yesterday, He admonished them for focusing on the details of the law while ignoring the Torah's values. 
 
In today's passage, He indicates the importance of our inner reality over the image we portray to others. What really matters, He tells us, is who and what we are in the deepest recesses of our being. 
 
Jesus was swollen, bruised, and bleeding while dying on the Cross – a gruesome image – but it was then that His love for us was most powerfully visible. 
 
The widow who donated two small coins to the Temple treasury seemed unimportant. However, Jesus not only saw her, but He recognized her generosity of heart; He saw that she was prepared, like Him, to give everything she had.
 
Indeed, appearances can be misleading. The scribes and Pharisees had far less substance than their outer image. In the widow and the crucified Jesus, there was far more than met the eye. Jesus tells us to be less concerned with how we appear to others than the quality of love in our hearts. 
 
So, let us pray, today and always, that God's Holy Spirit will kindle in our hearts the fire of His love and that we may be recreated to become the people He created each of us to be in the first place.