Pope Francis: Faith is not something cosmetic

Faith is not a 'cosmetic' matter, but one of active charity - Pope Francis said during his homily at the Tuesday morning Mass in Casa Santa Marta. Reflecting on the Gospel of the day,  in which St Luke recounts the story of Our Lord’s visit to the house of a Pharisee who shocked when he omits the ritual ablutions before dinner. “Jesus condemns this cosmetic spirituality" the Pope said.".. look good, beautiful – but the truth inside is something else. Jesus condemns the people of good manners but of bad habits, those habits that are not seen, but practiced in secret. Everything seems in place: these people who liked to walk in the streets, to be seen praying, to make themselves a little weak when fasting. Is the Lord perhaps like this? You see that there are two adjectives he uses here together: greed and wickedness.”

Jesus will call these Pharisees “whitewashed sepulchres” in the Gospel according to Matthew. Here, he invites them rather to give alms, which in Biblical tradition – in both the Old Testament and the New – a touchstone and paragon of justice. Such works of charity are essential, he explained, for, howsoever important it might be, “the law on its own does not save”:

“That, which avails, is faith – which faith? That, ‘which worketh by love’ – this is the same thing Jesus said to the Pharisee: a faith that is not merely reciting the Creed – we all believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, eternal life. We all believe! This, however, is a static faith, not one that is ‘at work’. That, which in Christ Jesus avails, is the hard work that comes from faith, or rather the faith that works through charity – that is, the faith that returns to almsgiving – almsgiving in the broadest sense of the word: of detaching oneself from the dictatorship of money, from the idolatry of lucre. Every disordered desire distances us from Jesus Christ.”

Pope Francis went on to recall an episode in the life of his late confrére, Father Arrupe, SJ Superior General of the Jesuits from the 60s to the 80s.

One day a rich lady invited him some place to give him money for the missions in Japan, to which Fr Arrupe was committed. She handed over the envelope on the doorstep of a building, right on the street, in front of reporters and photographers. Fr Arrupe said he had suffered a “great humiliation,” but accepted the money, “for the poor people of Japan.” When he opened the envelope, there were ten dollars inside....

“Jesus offers us this advice: ‘Do not sound the trumpet’. The second piece of advice: ‘Do not give only of your excess’ – and He is speaking to us of that old woman who gave everything she had to live on, and He praises that woman for having done it – and she did it half-secretly, for she was ashamed not to be able to give more.”

Source: Vatican Radio