Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
It is possible to develop a deranged sense of cleanliness. You can take a shower over and over again; you can clean your house over and over again. You can avoid touch points in crowded places. You can just avoid crowded places altogether, not to mention garbage dumps and sewage treatment plants. You might as well stay away from children, too. Who knows what diseases they spread? If you do all this, and maybe even a little more, how clean will you be? You will have achieved the cleanest possible body, and what will your reward be?
“What comes out of the man, that is what defiles him” (Mark 7:20). Your product is more important than your raw materials. Your exhaust is more important than your intake. Of course, it helps to start out with good equipment, but the decisive factor is what you do with what you’ve got, even if the deck is stacked against you.
Jesus showed us the true sense of cleanliness. Having ugly things all around him, Jesus did something wonderful. With a cross, with nails, with thorns, with the spit and contempt of his neighbors, with a thief on his right and a thief on his left, he made all things clean.