CLEAN FROM WITHIN

There is a pervading obsession to be clean and neat in our society today. We frequently wash our hands and use sanitizers to keep bacteria and germs away. We wash our faces with various cleansers. In grocery stores and supermarkets, an entire section is allotted for tons of disinfectants, soaps, lotions, and creams that can make our skins flawless and blemish free. As if these are not yet enough, we take in food with anti-oxidant and cleansing agents. Others even breath pure oxygen and drinking purified mineral water. But even after using these products and regiments, we still feel that they are not enough. We still feel unclean.

During the time of Jesus, people were also preoccupied on how to be clean. They have rituals for washing their bodies. They are very particular on the food they take. But even the observance of these laws pertaining to cleanliness failed to make them truly clean, as our collections of cleaning products also disappoint us. 

Christ reminds us that uncleanliness and consequently genuine cleanliness comes not from outside factors but from within us. It is what comes out of us and not what comes from outside of us that makes us clean or unclean. It is so since all that we take (the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe) are God's creation and thus are good in themselves. In principle, none of God's creation can harm us. What can pollute our minds and damage our bodies are those that come out of man: deceit, indecency, slander, pride, and folly. We can add to this list the unhealthy food man had concocted, the unhealthy lifestyle man has adopted, and the shows and information fed to us through different media of social communications. The things man do and create can either make him clean or unclean physically and spiritually. The unhealthy and evil things a person does affect not just himself but also others, in as much as our actions always have a social dimension.

What can make us truly clean also lies in the same seat of uncleanliness: from within us. Within us is the breath of God which He gave to us when He created us (Genesis 2:4b-9 15-17). That makes each one of us an image of God. God made us sharers of His divinity and goodness as He breathed life into us.  Through his creative act and gifts of intellect and will, He made us capable of knowing and doing either good or evil; things that can either make us clean or unclean. There is in us the capacity to do good things as God does in his creation, but also the freedom to choose good or evil; to be spotless or impure. And God encourages us to cooperate in His creative action, to create, do, and live the goodness He had gifted us, though we have a choice.

Will you choose to be clean or unclean; good or evil? Should you choose to be good and clean, you have within you the power to do so. Be faithful to the (good and clean) breath of God that gives life to us. Collaborate in God's creative act by choosing to be good and clean.