Authenticity

In today’s Gospel, Mt 23: 23-26,  Jesus confronts the Pharisees in being more concerned about the exterior, how one looks on the outside, than one’s interior, on judging others  by external laws as they did when Jesus  healed on the Sabbath or when he and his disciples pulled grains of wheat from the stalks on a Sabbath.  All they say were the exterior acts in relation to the letter of the law, not the interior disposition of meeting another’s need for food or of treating others with compassion. They were so caught up in imposing the letter of the law that they forgot to look deeper or to live from a deeper level where mercy, compassion, and love guide one’s actions.

This Scripture passage may become clearer, also,  by looking at it from the perspective of a visitor to my house. When they walk into the house, what they see is that everything is in its proper place. The rooms that they see may be  immaculately clean, everything in its proper place,  while those “off limits” are cluttered to the point of not having room to get to the bed or the computer desk or whatever.   I alone know whether or not I truly am a good housekeeper.  To pretend to be and to be so are two different realities.  Jesus was challenging the Pharisees to live authentically not pretentiously, to be truly free rather than to pretend to be free, to live lives of integrity rather than to pretend to be persons of integrity by exterior criteria alone.    What matters to God is the real thing: the Mother Teresa’s, the Martin Luther Kings, the Gandhi’s and so many others who do not only talk the talk but  walk the talk as well.  Their exterior matches their interior.
This is the challenge of ongoing conversion! Who I am on the inside is as important as the person seen by others from the outside.  How I dress may make me look beautiful on the outside.   Who I am truly from the inside fills me with a joy and a peace no piece of clothing can give me. It is inner beauty that radiates the God-life within and transforms what I do into what God does through me. There is no comparison.