Words of the Holy Father-rejecting this religion of appearances,-08-27-24

 Words of the Holy Father-rejecting this religion of appearances,-08-27-24

You Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. It is a concept, that Jesus “repeated many times in the Gospel”, offering certain people a clear warning: “Your interior is bad, it is not just, it is not free. You are slaves because you have not accepted the justice that comes from God”, which is the justice that Jesus gave us.

It is an interior freedom, which leads to doing “good in secret, without sounding the trumpet”: indeed, “the way of true religion is the same way of Jesus: humility, humiliation”. And as Paul says to the Philippians, Jesus humiliates himself, empties himself. And, this is the only way to take selfishness, greed, arrogance, vanity and worldliness, away from us. Faced with this example we find instead the attitude of those whom Jesus reproaches: “people who follow the religion of makeup: the appearance, to appear, pretending to seem” a certain way “while inside...”. (…)

Let us ask the Lord that we never tire of going down that path; that we never tire of rejecting this religion of appearances, this religion of seeming, of pretending.... We must instead be committed to proceed “quietly, doing good”, and doing so “freely as we have freely received our interior freedom”. May He guard this inner freedom for all of us. Let us ask for this grace. (Santa Marta, 11 October 2016)

Memorial of Saint Monica

Gospel and Thought for the Day - Vatican News https://www.vaticannews.va/en/word-of-the-day.html 

Gospel in Art: The Feast of Saint Monica https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/50502