O nly God can change our hearts and make them clean and whole through the power of the Holy Spirit. Like a physician who probes the wound before treating it, God through his Word and Spirit first brings to light our sinful condition that we may recognize sin for what it is and call upon God's mercy and pardon.

Memorial of St. John Vianney

Numbers 12:1-13

Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 6cd-7, 12-13

M atthew 15:1-2, 10-14  (alternate text: Matthew 14:22-36) 1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, (2) "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat." (10) Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, "Listen and understand: (11) it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." (12) Then the disciples approached and said to him, "Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?" (13) He answered, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. (14) Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit."

Supplementary Reading

Walk in the Way of Love by Juan Carlos Ortiz

Walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. – Ephesians 5:2

My father died when I was a child, leaving my mother with five of us to raise. Amazingly, we were able to buy a house—a fairly nice one, and reasonably priced.

After we moved in, we found out why it was so easy to acquire. In our enthusiasm, we failed to discover that it was beside railroad tracks. Several times an hour, we were treated to "Whooooo! Whooooo! Chugga-chugga-chugga. Whooooo! Whooooo!"

The first week we lost so much sleep that we were nervous and fighting with each other all the time. Then after a few weeks, a strange thing happened—we got used to the sound. We slept peacefully. Of course, visitors couldn't sleep, but that was only a temporary problem.

A few years later, the railway people went on strike, so the trains stopped for a few days. We couldn't sleep! We had grown so accustomed to the noise that we needed it to sleep. Our adjustment, though, did not mean that all that noise was a good thing.

People, like trains, can be quite noisy too. I'm not talking about people with loud voices, but about people consumed with obtrusive things that seem "noisy" because they're unnecessary. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:1 that the Christian who lacks love is like a "noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." Likewise, divisions in the church grow out of an absence of true love. We may get used to them, but that doesn't lessen God's displeasure with them.

The best excuses for division amount to clanging cymbals in God's ear. The least we can do, as well as the most we can do, is to love the brethren, and to love those of the world who need to see God's love firsthand.

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Be more than a clanging cymbal in God's ear today. Love others in a way that lets them experiences God's love firsthand.

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