Cleansing The Inner Vessel

Christ had a discussion with the Pharisees about the importance of cleansing the inner vessel, instead of only focusing on an outward show of righteousness. I was thinking about ways in which we might go about cleansing our inner vessel, and how it might relate to the act of washing dishes. If we repent immediately, we could compare that to washing a dish immediately after using it. Any crumbs or sauces rinse right off with little to no effort. But if we procrastinate our repentance and allow our inner vessels to crust over with the consequences of sin, then we will find that we may need a lot more effort to scrub our souls clean. God, more than anything, wants to help us become clean, so He may throw us into hot water for a while so that if we do not take it upon ourselves to be humble, then He will compel us to be humble. Some unrighteous behaviors may have become so ingrained and habituated that we may pray and fast and scrub and scrub until we're exhausted and yet the stains don't seem to be going anywhere. We may rinse ourselves over and over in the cleansing power of the Sacrament and find to our frustration that there still lingers a greasy film of temptations and sins that do easily beset us. Washing the dishes can be inconvenient and annoying and frustrating and exhausting, and it always seems like a waste of effort since they're just going to get dirty again, and we will always come up with a million excuses to postpone or avoid doing them, but we still do it anyway because we can't make it very far in life without any clean dishes. We ought to carry the same mindset when it comes to cleansing our inner vessel. Yes it can be inconvenient and annoying and frustrating and exhausting having to repent for the same kinds of mistakes over and over again, and it can seem like a waste of effort since our souls are just going to get dirty again, and we will always come up with a million excuses to postpone or avoid repenting, but we should do it anyway because life is so much easier when our inner vessels are clean, even for a little while.