Religion beyond externals

There will always be the problem of masks. I am not talking about the masks children wear in a Halloween party or on New Year’s Eve when they toot their horns. These masks initiate loud laughter when they make of children look like monsters, witches, lions, tigers, goats, rabbits, Indians of the Wild West or some funny Pinoy character. I am speaking of the mask used by a person who wants to identify himself with some role, or when one wants to put up a front, or when he wants to appear as someone he really is not.

Yes, we do wear masks, then stand on a pedestal, gloriously inflated before the world. And if children make us laugh wearing their masks just for fun, we adults, putting up our masks to impress, better realize that we are just as funny but in a different vein. Because while we try to appear fit for that lofty pedestal, to appear dignified, worthy of admiration, respect, a churchgoer who follows all the sitting-downs and kneeling, the holding of the locked arms or hands in praying the "Our Father," occupying the front seat in church because we are figureheads in the parish or government officials, or persons of affluence who show the whole congregation that we go around to get the collection from the faithful, or are readers of the Word of God, or even lay ministers.

We consider ourselves the privileged ones among the faithful. We might be the most generous donors to the church even contributing money gotten by corrupt means; or because we think we are that prestigious, we begin acting like guardias del templo in church or sanctuary. Until by a stroke of ill-luck we are unmasked and people discover that what they thought of us as ‘the holy ones’ among the elders in the church, stink with malice, licentiousness, envy, dishonesty, arrogance and vice. Then we look at ourselves and realize what utter folly it is to be wearing masks. We get angry towards those who have unmasked us, at the same time realizing what fools we have made of ourselves.

Weaklings though we are, the following of Christ doesn’t go with weak sentiments, or second or third-rate external show. It needs a strong love given with a virile courage; it wants something great from our soul, from our heart. The invitation of Christ to come and follow Him demands an interior religion from anyone who accepts it. Christ invites us to the practice of a religion which goes beyond lip-service or striking of breasts to express sorrow for sins or the sign of peace as dictated part of the rubrics or locking of arms to show that we love one another or dancing rock or pop-singing in action of our prayers. I don’t say we should do away with them; they sort of help us pray.

The whole point is to be authentic; to reach the very core of our life in our very heart – an interior religious living. We need to enter the very depths of our being, ever ready to receive echoes of the immensities of life and love which is revealed to us by Father’s dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to act accordingly. For Jesus responded to the criticism of the Pharisees that the disciples do not purify their hands before eating. Against this Pharisaic pretense Jesus responded: "these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me… all evils come from within and that is what defiles" (Mk 7:6.18).

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Mark 7:1-8; 14-15; 21-23.