Dear People of God,

During the crusades, Christian soldiers are said to have captured Muslims and then baptized them before beheading them. "One more Muslim gone to heaven through the saving waters of Baptism," they thought, while the anger and rage towards the infidel just burned in their hearts.

Many of us are good people. And in our goodness we want to scrupulously carry out the law as embodied in our religion. We take a big part in the different sacraments and follow all the instructions and rituals involved. In other words, we have a great and abiding love for the law. Underlying this love of the law is the belief that if we carry out the law faithfully and scrupulously, we'll be safe and secure. And security is important to us nowadays.

In the Gospel, the Pharisees pointed accusing fingers at the disciples of Jesus by asking, "Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders, but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?" For them, the law of men became an end in itself. The religious leaders were using 'the law of men', to gain respect, position and wealth over the people. Jesus saw that the tradition was being used to turn people away from God rather than bringing them to God, to see His mercy and compassion. Jesus went on to say, "Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile." By saying this, Jesus was freeing the people from the tyranny of the externals, and giving them a freedom to live with the law of love in their hearts.

Today, there is great preoccupation with the environment – with the quality of water we drink, the food we eat, and the air we breathe. It is not that these are unimportant. It is just that there is another environment which is even more important – the moral environment. Evil is the worst kind of pollution of all. But the source of evil, as well as of good is within us. All our thoughts, words and deeds flow from the heart like the water from a hidden spring. If the spring is clean, then all that flows from it will be clean. All those things, we read about in the newspapers: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, envy, slander, pride, etc., start inside a person. Their seeds are within us. These are the things which make a person unclean in the eyes of God. Hence we must purify the source. If the spring is clean, then all that flows from it will be clean.

May God bless us all to purify our hearts.

Father Lawrence