02 September. 22nd Sunday

1st Reading: Deuteronomy (4:1-2, 6-8)

Listening to God’s word brings life and wisdom

Moses said to the people: “So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you.

You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?”

Resp. Psalm (Ps 15)

R.: Those who act justly will live in the presence of the Lord

Whoever walks blamelessly and does justice;
who thinks the truth in his heart
and slanders not with his tongue. (R./)

Who harms not his fellow man,
nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor;
by whom the reprobate is despised,
while he honours those who revere the Lord. (R./)

Who lends not his money at usury
and accepts no bribe against the innocent.
Whoever does these things
shall never be disturbed. (R./)

2nd Reading: James (1:17-18, 21-22, 27)

As doers of the Word we must put it into practice too

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Gospel: Mark (7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

The Scribes’ and Phariseed’ worship of God was mere lip-service

When the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)

So these Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

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Separating sense from nonsense

The first reading form Deuteronomy should help us avoid any unsubtle contrasting of Jesus and Judaism. In reality, all religious traditions accrue attitudes and practices, sometimes at variance with the original inspiration. Some of these are indeed helpful, some are harmless and some are nonsense. It is the task of each Christian generation to discern what is the heart of the matter and to let go of whatever worked in its day but no longer serves the Gospel. (Kieran O’Mahony) For his exegetical comments, click here.

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Why change things?

(José Antonio Pagola)

A group of Pharisees from Galilee approach Jesus with a critical attitude. They don’t come alone. They’re accompanied by some Scribes from Jerusalem, undoubtedly concerned with defending the orthodoxy of the simple villagers of the countryside. Because Jesus’ activity is dangerous it needscorrecting. They’ve seen how in certain ways his disciples don’t follow the tradition of their ancestors. Although they talk about the disciples’ behaviour, their question is directed to Jesus, since he’s the one who has been promoting this surprising freedom. Why?

Jesus answers with words from the prophet Isaiah that shed a lot of light on his message and activity. We need to listen attentively to these words with which Jesus identifies himself completely, since they touch on something very basic in our religion. According to the prophet of Israel, this is God’s complaint. «This people honours me only with lip-service, while their hearts are far from me». This is always the challenge of any religion: honor God with lips that repeat formulas, recite psalms, pronounce beautiful words, while our heart «is far from God». However the worship that is pleasing to God is born of the heart, of the inner attachment, of that intimate center of the person where our decisions and projects are born.

If our heart is far from God, our worship becomes empty. It lacks life, the sincere listening to God’s Word, the love of our fellow human beings. Religion becomes something exterior that is practiced by rote, but which lacks the fruits of a life faithful to God. What the Scribes teach are merely human precepts. In every religion there are traditions of this kind. Norms, customs, devotions that have arisen in order to live out the religiosity of a particular culture. They can do much good. But they can do much damage when they distract and distance us from what God hopes from us. Never should they have primacy.

After quoting from Isaiah, Jesus continues with some serious words of his own: «You put aside the commandment of God to observe human traditions». When we blindly attach ourselves to human traditions, we run the risk of forgetting the command of love and we wander away from the following of Jesus, the incarnate Word of God. In Christian religion, what’s first is always Jesus and his call to love. Only later come our human traditions, as important as they could appear to us to be. We mustn’t ever forget what’s essential.

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Evaluating tradition

“You have abandoned the commands of God and cling to merely human traditions.” Have you ever sat in church and wondered if you might be doing something more useful outside, instead? It’s not that you don’t believe, not that you don’t feel God is important in your life, but you wonder if the church is really nourishing your faith. There are times when we feel little sense of meeting with the living spirit of Jesus Christ.

The Jesus of the Gospels is always exciting; always relevant to the problems and needs of people; challenging to those who need change; open to those who seek help; always a friend to the stranger, a support to the tired and depressed, an inspiration to anyone who tried to follow him. The Jesus we meet in the Gospels is the most charismatic, life-changing man. Shouldn’t coming to church be about meeting with him?

When we hear his scathing attack on the Pharisees, let’s not think it’s got nothing to do with us. The Pharisees were a religious group who had become rigid in their ways. Their beliefs were sincerely held, but they did not help ordinary people to keep a sense of God’s love. Jesus tells them, “You have let go of the commands of God and are clinging to merely human traditions.” Naturally they would have been furious at this and regarded Jesus as a populist troublemaker. They were angry with him because he had hit a sore spot. He doesn’t say that what they believe is wrong. The problem is in their rigid ethical rules, for they have forgotten the key commands of God and focus on detailed regulations.

There are many, particularly younger people, who have no problem with the Christian ideals of love and compassion. Their problem is with the way the church goes about things. Jesus clearly wants us to make disciples of all people, but we will not be able to do that if our regulations become an end in themselves. Church structures are only useful if they serve the original purpose, which is to bring people to Jesus. He is not concerned with the outward rituals, but with what is in our hearts and the hearts of those we meet. What is important is our meeting with this amazing, charismatic, life-changing person, Jesus, and our response to him.

He applies to the Pharisees these words from Isaiah, ‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’ Maybe that’s true of us also, at times. His words invite us to ask ourselves, “how can I help make my church a place where anyone who walks in feel that they can meet with God?” Jesus said, “You have let go of the commands of God and prefer mere human traditions.” Let’s not be guilty of the same accusation.

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Whited Sepulchres

In olden times burial was forbidden within the walls of a city, so the usual place for tombs was by the side of public roads leading out from the city. Many examples can be seen just outside Rome, along the Appian Way leading towards Naples. The Jews also buried their dead outside the city walls. Now, in the Mosaic Law, anyone who touched a dead body, or came into contact with a tomb, became automatically unclean, and was thereby debarred from attending the Temple ceremoniesr in Jerusalem. To prevent such a disaster it became a Jewish custom to whitewash all wayside tombs in before the Feast of Passover, so that they were conspicuous and easier to avoid. So in the Spring sunshine these tombs stood out, sparkling white, although inside they were full of decaying bodies or bones, whose touch would defile.

According to Jesus, the Pharisees were like whited sepulchres. They were devout men of rigid mindset, who scorned the majority, whom they regarded as sinners. The name Pharisees means “separated ones.” As a group they distanced themselves not just from gentile sinners, but also from lax Jews who were less observant of the Law. They arrogantly dismissed most people as “a rabble that do not know the Law.” In today’s Gospel we see how the Scribes and Pharisees had come to hear Jesus, but instead of pondering what he had to say they began to criticise the behaviour of his disciples. It was the age-old tactic of lowering someone’s credibility by disparaging his friends.

They grumbled that his disciples were eating without having first washed their hands, contrary to Jewish tradition. This typified the Pharisees’ air of self-righteousness. This is not to say that all Pharisees were bad or immoral. Some, like Nicodemus, were sincere searchers for the truth. But there is nothing harder for a good person than to avoid being proud, and once pride intervenes, goodness is tarnished. In attempting to be perfect in every little detail of the Law, a Pharisee could end up as a bigoted legalist, or indeed a violent zealot like Saul of Tarsus. So when Jesus condemned the Pharisees as whited sepulchres, many of those listening would have agreed with him.

His warning holds a message for everyone, to look into the depths of our own souls. Deep within us God has written his Law, and it is our moral duty to obey it, as we see it in our conscience. We will be judged according to the way we behave, based on what in our hearts we judge be right and true and proper. “It is from within,” Jesus tells us today, “that evil arises.” He wants us to look beyond current opinion, the current maxims and mantras of popular opinion, and strive for greater purity of heart. Steer clear of stupid conflicts and from slavery to convention and taboos, he says, and open up to the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

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Pruning the Rules

Jesus clashed with the Pharisees who held certain traditions in high regard. These were rules not written in the Scriptures but widely practised as signs of devotion. During his ministry, Jesus challenged the priority the Pharisees gave to these fixed rules, rather than showing compassion in all circumstances. He warns the religious leaders that their zeal for man-made traditions was undermining the commandment of God. Those Pharisaic rules did not matter to God, according to Jesus. Ritual washings of cups and pots do not matter a much as what is in our heart and what comes from out of our heart. Many of us are reluctant to start doing things differently than in the past. But if the habits we have developed can serve us well they can also hold us back. There’s a time for “Spring-cleaning”, even if early in September!

Gardeners know the need to prune if plants are not to grow too big and the fruit loses its quality. Jesus saw jow Jewish rules needed to be pruned, so as not to have undue importance. He highlighted what was most important in God’s eyes, and critiqued the Pharisee mindset by citing the prophet Isaiah. Aware that religious tradition can hide God as well as reveal God, he highlighted the parts of Jewish tradition that expressed love for God and our neighbour. Too many rules were merely hiding God from people’s sight. Our own traditions likewise need pruning, including long-held traditions of our church. What has become important to us over time may not be as important to God. We need to re-think the celibacy rule for priests and find a larger role for women in the church’s ministry. We need to keep going back to the New Testament and to the gospels in particular to learn over and over again what Jesus says is important to God. The Lord continues to remind us of what is important to God and what, therefore, should be important to us.

Today’s reading from the letter of James calls us to ‘welcome with meekness the implanted word.’ The Lord’s message is not something outside of ourselves, written in a book; it has been planted in us, through baptism. James reminds us also in that accepting the Lord’s word means not just hearing it but doing it, acting as God wants us to. If we submit to the Spirit in that full sense, then what is important to God will also be important to us. James is very clear about what our priorities should be: helping people in need, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.

The first priority is how we relate to one another, in particular how we relate to the weakest and most vulnerable among us. Jesus did not hesitate to heal the sick on the Sabbath even though some held held that this constituted work and so was unlawful. The words and deeds of Jesus are always are best guide to what is of real value in our own religious tradition and what it is that may need to be put aside

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Machtnamh: Ní mór bearradh a dhéanamh ar na Rialacháin (Regulations need pruning)

Tháinig Íosa i gcoimhlint leis na Phairisigh a thug aird mhór don traidisiún. Ba rialacha traidisiúnta iad seo nach bhfuil scríofa sna Scrioptúir ach a chleachtadh go forleathan mar chomharthaí de dhualgas. Le linn a chuid aireacht, rinne Íosa dúshlán ar an tosaíocht a thug na Fairisigh do na rialacha traidisiúnta seo, seachas truailliú a léiriú i ngach cás. Tugann sé rabhadh do na ceannairí reiligiúin gurbh é a bhí i ndícheall na traidisiúin dhéantúsacha seo a chothabháil go raibh siad i mbaol ar ordú Dé. Ní raibh an méid a mhéadaigh an Pharisigh le Dia, de réir Íosa. Ní bhaineann le níocháin rítheacha cupán agus potaí le Dia beagnach an méid atá inár gcroí agus an rud a thagann as ár gcroí.