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Gospel Reflection for Wednesday, February 12, 2025
The Question of Purity and Impurity
All known religions have dealt with the issue of purity and impurity. It’s normal. From our limited human perspective, God is the Almighty, the Supreme Being beyond anything we can imagine—the holiest and the purest. He is pure because there is nothing in Him that is bad or unclean.
Logically, then, in order to approach Him, purity is a necessary condition. A person must rid themselves of anything impure or unclean, of anything that is sinful in any form. Because the presence of God rejects impurity. Anything impure or unclean repels God—it cannot come close to Him or mix with divinity. Impurity and God are like water and oil; they cannot be combined.
Because of this, all religions have worked hard to define and classify everything that can make a person impure. They have always ended up creating long lists of sins and actions that make men and women impure. And, as a necessary next step, they have established rituals and practices for a person to regain purity. This is how things have been, and this is how our minds often work.
But in Jesus, this entire way of thinking loses its meaning. Jesus—God with us—approaches the impure, the sinners. He mixes with them. He makes it clear that He has come to save sinners. Even more, He Himself becomes impure—at least according to the Jewish purity laws. From the moment He is born in a manger, when He is adored by shepherds (who were considered impure by excellence), when He mingles with sinners and eats with them.
In Jesus, God draws near to the impure and extends a saving hand—a hand of unconditional and free love.
And He makes it clear that, beyond all the ritual purity laws—mere human inventions—what truly makes a person impure is the evil that so often comes from their own heart. Who can claim to be pure from this perspective? No one.
That is why He has come—to save us, to heal us, to reconcile us, to give us all a new opportunity. Without excluding anyone. Because we are all impure.