In the gospel today, our Lord teaches us the importance of purity of heart, that not only are we, not only do we seek to have, to appear, that above all, that our hearts must be transformed.
And He addresses the hypocrisy of the Pharisee who goes to great detail or attention to observing the customs of washings before meal, of cups or bowls or other things, but yet inside is filled with plunder and evil.
And so it's just, He's trying to make us understand that our outside appearance must correspond with our interior appearance, meaning that our hearts, our hearts, our minds must be pure, that we must be transformed interiorly, and that our hearts and our minds no longer have any residue of evil within us, of evil.
And one of the means He gives to accomplish this is the giving of alms.
The giving of alms, making that sacrifice by which we seek to atone for our sins.
But above all, the gospel just reminds us to pay attention, not to allow ourselves to be deceived by our exterior motives, but that our interior, which God alone can see, that we must pay attention to our hearts and our minds being pure before God.
Today we honor in the liturgy St. Callistus I. He was a pope for a relatively short time, only about five years, and his history is interesting. It is said that he had been a slave at one point and eventually after gaining his freedom went on to become a priest and then a bishop and then pope.
His reign was during a very difficult time in which the emperor of Rome was very corrupt, immoral, and persecuting the Christians. And Callistus had several things that he was acknowledged for. One is that he established the first Christian cemetery in Rome, and that cemetery is named after him, the Callistus Cemetery. So he established the first Christian cemetery in Rome, the Catacomb.
And also, he was the Pope of Mercy, where there was an antipope at the time who did not think that the sacrament of confession could be extended to certain people, that there were certain sins that could not be forgiven through the sacrament of confession. One of those sins that was being held as unforgivable was apostasy, having abandoned the Church or denied Christ and the Church and one's faith.
And yet the Pope Callistus, the Holy Spirit, made known otherwise, that yes, all sins are forgiven by God through the sacrament of confession. There is no sin that cannot be forgiven and grace restored and divine life restored. There's no sin that is without the limits of God's mercy.
And so he was known as the Pope of Mercy and also the Pope who had great care for the deceased, establishing the first Christian cemetery. And so we ask Pope St. Callistus today to help us as he gave his blood for Christ, to be courageous in our daily witness in following Christ, and never to be ashamed to give that witness in our love and our devotion to Christ, that we also may be instruments of God's mercy to each person that we meet each day.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.