“So That the Outside Also May Be Clean” by Melanie Rigney (@melanierigney)

“So That the Outside Also May Be Clean” by Melanie Rigney (@melanierigney)

Memorial of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Monica and Augustine
(Ary Scheffer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.  (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)

The Lord comes to judge the earth. (Psalm 96:13b)

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean." (Matthew 23:25-26)

Piety

Soul of Christ, sanctify me; Body of Christ, save me; Blood of Christ, inebriate me; Water from Chris’s side, wash me; Passion of Chris, strengthen me (opening of the Anima Christi).

Study

He was thirty-one when he converted to Christianity.  He had already fathered a child with a woman, not his wife, and sent her away because he had plans to marry a very young heiress. He was a brilliant scholar and a well-connected teacher. He had a mother who wouldn’t stop talking to him about Jesus and who he often ignored and avoided, and a mentor, St. Ambrose, whose eloquence on the topic ultimately perhaps moved him as much as his mother’s entreaties did.

Augustine’s life up until that was, shall we say, untidy. Disordered. Self-focused. The inside of the cup was grimy and gritty. Afterward… well, it was different. He was baptized, ordained, and named a bishop in the space of eight years. For the rest of his life, Augustine was one of the greatest defenders of the faith, often using his own story as a sign of the Lord’s mercy.

Sometimes, we focus on the outside of our cup… Mass attendance, check. Tithing, check. Time spent in service, check. To the world, we may look like uber-Christians, saintly almost, worthy of imitation. But we know better. We know our lives are like Augustine’s even after his conversion, full of challenges and struggles and temptations to focus on shiny-ing up our exterior. May we be receptive to all the messengers the Lord sends to help us scrub the interior… because unless we do that on a regular basis, the outside doesn’t matter.

Action

Add five minutes of silence to your prayer practice today. Just listen.