10 February 2026 - Tuesday of the 5th week of Ordinary Time
HOMILY
In the Gospel, Jesus reminds -- both the crowds who come to him and the Pharisees and scribes -- that the purity that counts before God is not the ‘ritual purity’ that concerned the ancient religions, including that of Israel, and which was sought through rites and cultic practices, but rather purity of heart.
There is a spiritual dimension to human beings that cannot be ignored. A certain form of religiosity, linked to an agrarian period of civilization – which had continued for several millennia – was swept away, in a sense, by the development of the industrial and technological revolutions, and then by the advent of the age of communication and information. Instead of lamenting the decline of a form of religious ‘practice’, we can see it as a challenge – a challenge to allow the novelty of the Gospel to develop more fully today, so that the spiritual dimension of human beings is expressed more and more in the authenticity of everyday life, particularly through works of justice and sharing, rather than through rites linked to another cultural stage of humanity.
Jesus had already explained that purity of heart, manifested in all aspects of daily life, must replace the ritual purity of primitive religions, which implied a distinction between the profane and the sacred and a distinction between pure people and... others. This distinction between the sacred and the profane was what allowed Israel to consider itself superior to all other peoples. In today's Gospel, Jesus' disciples are accused precisely of not respecting this separation between the pure and the impure. Jesus calls us to overcome this form of religiosity.
Let the word of God penetrate our personal and collective ‘today’ and challenge us to an ever-renewed conversion of our way of being.
Today we celebrate the memory of Saint Scholastica.
Armand Veilleux