St. Maria Goretti

In Bill Watterson’s delightful cartoon series “Calvin and Hobbes”, Calvin is the youngster who is always having adventures. In one particular scene, Calvin marches up to his mother wearing a helmet and cape. He tells her that whatever happens today, he’s ready for it.

Calvin is not the only one. Oh how we all like to feel that way! We try and be prepared. We try to always be ready. We try and anticipate everything and every situation. When we walk out that door in the morning, we like to do so ready for the day. And when we’re not prepared, when we’re not ready, especially for what we know is coming, it makes for a very tumultuous day. Because we know if we’re not ready for what we know is going to happen, then we’re really not ready for what we don’t know is going to happen. And yet, we are also fully aware that we can’t always know what life will send our way. Remember five years ago? Remember waking up and starting our day on September 11^th, 2001? Who could have imagined how our world would change in one day? We know that something could happen today, something that would shake us, something for which we would like to be ready. And we’re on the lookout for it. We don’t want to get caught off guard again

It’s that fear of what’s going to happen to him that Calvin is talking about in the comic strip. Calvin would seem to believe that the greatest threat to his well-being will come from forces OUTSIDE of him. Thus his need for the “suit”. Many of us, maybe even most of us, believe the same way. There are at least two dangers in this way of thinking: One is that it sets us up to ‘play the victim’. In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey contends that all of us are effective when we claim our behaviors as evidence of the choices that we have made. We are not effective then, when we blame everybody and everything else, when we see ourselves as the ‘victim’. The Second danger in perceiving that the larger threat is from outside is that it makes taking personal responsibility for our behavior more unlikely. Another cartoon character, ‘Dennis the Menace’ ( This is my comic strip homily!) is often portrayed facing a corner, with his head on his arms, and wondering why he is always the one who gets in trouble. How many times do we do the same thing? Until we all become responsible for our behavior and our choices, nothing changes.

And this brings us to what Jesus is talking about today. Jesus is saying something very different from Calvin and from our world. Jesus is saying that the biggest threat to our wholeness comes NOT from outside, but from within! Jesus said, in verse 15, “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” In the Gospel, the Pharisees are terribly offended because they observed that the Disciples didn’t wash their hands before eating. The Pharisees believed that eating without first washing made one ritually unclean in the eyes of God, and thus, liable to suffering, even destruction. Jesus disagrees and tells them to look inward first, that nothing external to them, LIKE not washing one’s hands before eating, can defile them in God’s eyes. Real uncleanness has nothing to do with what we take into our bodies and EVERYTHING to do with what comes out of our hearts.

And if we’re honest, don’t we know that that is true? How many times have we asked God to protect us from the evils OUT there in the world? Just look at how many enemies there are to the Catholic Christian Faith life! Which one or ones is our worst enemy? Violence? Abortion? Hatred? Pornography? Greed? Stress? According to Jesus, none of these are our worst enemy. Instead, He invites us to look inwardly: impatience, selfishness, pride, jealousy, and deceitfulness. These are what we ought to most be concerned about! Don’t misunderstand here! The dangers that exist in our world to our souls, are real. Violence, Abortion, Hatred, Pornography, Greed, and Stress can get you sent to Hell. But first, we all must take that inward journey to an awareness of our own sin, before we can make an authentic difference in our world. We need to be careful with our choices and why we make them. Jesus warning is valid. The biggest obstacle to my holiness will very likely be me. And Calvin doesn’t have a Helmet and cape for that.

God bless us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…

AMEN !!!