Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (B), September 1, 2024

The big boys from Jerusalem come to Jesus to complain about his disciples failure to follow the ways of their forefathers, more particularly, their failure to wash their hands before meals. It sounds at first like a reasonable complaint to us, but their intervention wasn't really about proper hygiene; it had much more to do with the measures they were using to judge how faithful to God one was. These cleanliness rules were really ritual purification rules and those who followed them faithfully were faithful to God and God to them. Jesus doesn't like this one bit: the externals are not the measure of a person's holiness or closeness to God; it is what is on the inside that counts! 

Homily shared with the Saint Francis Catholic Community in Cuenca, Ecuador.