Purity: An Inside-Out Journey

The readings today place a single question before the heart: Where does true purity and wisdom live; in what we manage on the outside, or in what God is forming within? A famous queen travels far to test a king’s wisdom. A psalm whispers that the just person’s words carry quiet light. And Jesus makes a startling claim: nothing outside a person can defile; it is what emerges from the heart that truly matters. On this optional memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, the Church also remembers a young peasant girl, Bernadette, and a spring of water that still draws the sick and searching. Together, these texts and memories summon a conversion that is at once humble, intelligent, and practical.

When Splendor Meets Wisdom

The Queen of Sheba arrives with gold, spices, and questions; and she leaves breathless, not primarily because of Solomon’s wealth but because of the wisdom ordering his world. She sees a people well-served, a house well-ordered, worship well-offered, justice and judgment named as a king’s vocation. Her conclusion is theological, not merely sociological: Blessed be the Lord who placed you here for justice.

Our moment knows how to create spectacle. Careers, profiles, and platforms can gleam like caravans of gold and spices. But Scripture’s test is subtler: Do our visible achievements convert anyone’s gaze to God? Does what we build lead to justice and mercy, or merely to applause? The Queen of Sheba recognized a wisdom that organized power for service and prosperity for praise. That is the true hallmark of godly success; not that it dazzles, but that it blesses.

The Mouth of the Just and the Quiet Law Within

Psalm 37 describes a person whose tongue carries wisdom because God’s law rests in the heart. The psalm’s image is wonderfully understated: the mouth of the just murmurs wisdom. In an age of amplifiers; where opinions are megaphoned and hot takes rewarded; the Spirit proposes something quieter and deeper: speech that arises from a heart tutored by God.

Our digital lives test this daily. The velocity of feeds tempts us to speak before we listen, react before we recollect, and win arguments instead of seeking understanding. The psalm invites a reversal: let the interior law guide the tongue. The just person’s stability; “his steps do not falter”; is not the result of perfect circumstances but of a practiced interiority. When the heart stores God’s word, the mouth becomes a small sanctuary where wisdom can be heard even in noisy places.

Jesus and the Courage to Look Within

Jesus’ words in Mark 7 relocate the center of moral seriousness. Ritual boundaries and external markers have their place, but they do not make a person clean or unclean in the deepest sense. What defiles, Jesus says, emerges from the heart: intentions that curdle into actions; greed, deceit, unchastity, envy, arrogance, and more. His list is uncomfortably comprehensive because the human heart is complex.

Two clarities arise. First, Jesus does not reduce sin to structures out there, nor to foods, cultures, or groups. The decisive theater is interior. Second, he doesn’t scapegoat influences as if they force the heart’s hand. What we consume; media, narratives, ideologies; does matter; but it is our responses, consent, and choices that either defile or become occasions for grace. Christians are not fatalists. The Holy Spirit empowers freedom at the level where thoughts become deliberations, and deliberations become deeds.

Facing this interior truth is both sobering and liberating. It ends spiritual blame-shifting and makes growth possible. When a person dares to examine the heart with Christ, sin loses its fog and the will regains its dignity. Grace meets us not in the curated public self but in the untidy room where motives are mixed and desires need healing.

Lourdes: A Spring for the Heart

On February 11, the Church honors Our Lady of Lourdes. In 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, a poor, asthmatic teenager from Lourdes, France. She identified herself as the Immaculate Conception; Mary, preserved by grace from sin’s stain, entirely interiorly pure by God’s singular gift. She called for prayer and penance, and she led Bernadette to uncover a hidden spring whose waters still gather the sick and searching from around the world.

Lourdes is not a detour from today’s Gospel but an embodiment of it. Mary points not to ritualism for its own sake but to conversion of heart: pray, do penance, turn back to God. The spring is not magic; it is a sign. Healings at Lourdes, whether physical or interior, are not aesthetic proofs but invitations to trust the Physician of souls. Bernadette herself did not seek status; she embraced hiddenness and humility. In a world tempted to perform virtue, Lourdes remembers that purification is God’s work and that repentance clears the heart’s riverbed so grace can flow.

Lourdes also dignifies the sick. In processions where wheelchairs lead, the Church confesses that weakness is not defilement and illness is not moral failure. The Christian task is not to curate an image of health but to accompany one another toward holiness.

Practicing Interior Purity in a Noisy Age

If the heart is the decisive place, how do we cooperate with grace there?

• Commit your way to the Lord each morning. Psalm 37 begins here. A simple morning offering, naming the day’s meetings, temptations, and hopes, places the heart under God’s wisdom before other voices claim it.
• Slow the tongue; sift the words. Before speaking or posting, ask: Does this build truth, justice, or reconciliation? If it must correct, can it do so without contempt? Wisdom’s murmur can be firm without being harsh.
• Practice a daily examen. In five minutes, review the day with the Lord: Where did pride or envy stir? Where did generosity surprise you? Thank God for graces, repent concretely, and ask for tomorrow’s help. Over time, patterns emerge and freedom deepens.
• Confession as medicine, not performance. Naming sins aloud to Christ’s minister humbles the ego and heals the heart. Regular confession is not scrupulosity; it is consenting to the surgery of grace.
• Let prosperity serve praise and justice. The Queen of Sheba’s gifts and Solomon’s order point beyond themselves. Channel resources; time, skills, money; toward the poor, the sick, and the overlooked. Wisdom spends itself on love.
• Stand with the suffering. In the spirit of Lourdes, intercede for the ill, visit the lonely, and advocate for compassionate care. Where the world hides weakness, Christians draw near.
• Curate not just inputs but responses. You may not control every image or idea that crosses your path, but you can choose the interior reply: averted eyes, a prayer, a delay before judgment, a refusal to envy. Interior freedom grows where tiny choices are made with God.

Hope Stronger Than Our Vices

The psalm closes with sturdy confidence: the salvation of the just is from the Lord. The Christian life does not rest on our perfect self-management but on God’s faithful rescue. The heart can be purified because God draws near. Christ, Wisdom incarnate, enters the very place where evil thoughts are conceived, and by his cross and resurrection, sows a new creation within us.

Solomon’s ordered court, the just person’s quiet speech, Jesus’ fearless diagnosis, and Lourdes’ humble spring converge on one promise: grace can make the heart clean. When that happens, our words begin to carry peace, our work begins to serve justice, and even our suffering can become a place where God’s mercy is recognized. In a world dazzled by the outside, God is building something enduring on the inside; so that what comes out of us, at last, is love.