Reflection for September 1, 2024

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

​Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8 | Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5 | James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27 | Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

​Simply following God's rules does not make you holy. As we pray with the Scriptures on this Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, we are challenged to discover what it really means to live a holy life, what it really means to follow God's law, and through that law, to become holy.

​Graders at Paco Catholic School were lined up in the canteen for lunch. At the head of the table was a huge bowl of apples with a sign that read; "Take only one. God is watching!" Moving through the line, to the other end of the table, was a large pile of chocolate chip cookies. One little boy wrote his own note and snuck it next to the cookies, "Take all you want, God is watching the apples!"

Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy, reminded the Israelites of the great gift God had given them in the Law. The Law defined them as a people. It declared Yahweh as their God and Israel as his people. That relationship was expressed in God's words, "I will be your God and you will be my people." The Decalogue and some 613 commandments in the Torah played a central and fundamental role in shaping the lives of the Jewish people. They were not just static rules of conduct, but a guide on how to be God’s people, and how to manifest this identity through appropriate relationships with God, and with fellow members of the community. The problem with these instructions is that we often see them as rules, imposed to limit our freedom and constrain our behavior. The law is a sign of the closeness of God, and is a reminder of the special relationship that existed between God and Israel. The law was an invitation into a relationship. There will always be rules in any kind of relationships and these rules must not enslave us but make us more free to love. The Ten Commandments are all about love — I am your only deliverer, the One who loves and chooses you; Love me exclusively; Regard my love as sacred; Rest in me; Honor your life and its history. Do no harm to others: Forsake anger, Abandon lust, Renounce greed, and Abhor lying. Refuse envy — One who does not seek to live by the Ten Commandments does not simply have a problem with the law. He or she has a problem with love. The commandments are a clear guide for our actions. Therefore we must carefully observe the commandments of the Lord. We shouldn't modify it for the sake of convenience. We shouldn't ignore it to gain advantage. 

While civil rights leader Mahatma Gandhi was a practicing Hindu, Christianity intrigued him. In his reading of the Gospels, Gandhi was impressed by Jesus whom Christians worshiped and followed. He wanted to know more about this Jesus that Christians referred to as “the Christ, the Messiah.” In one of his travels to South Africa, Gandhi decided that he would visit one of the Christian churches. As he came up the steps of the large church he was stopped at the door by the ushers. Since he was not part of the high-caste Indians nor a white person, he was turned away at the door of the church. Unwelcomed. Once when Methodist missionary Eli Stanley Jones met with Gandhi, he asked him, “Mr. Gandhi, you quote the words of Christ often, would you consider becoming a Christian?" Gandhi replied, “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Our actions must support our words. Underscoring the perennial discrepancy between human speech (the talk) and behavior (the walk), Saint James, in the second reading, tells us to be doers of the word and not hearers only, lest we deceive ourselves. James placed the moral lifestyle of the Christian in the context of grace. Every good gift came from God. But the highest gift was his "Word," the indwelling of Christ through the power of the Spirit. The Word was not something to be simply heard, as something external. No, it was to take root in one's being and lived out. For James, the life of grace was the ethical life. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to perform acts of charity and keep a morally upright reputation. What a reminder of the importance of living a faith of action in service to others! 

When I was a high school seminarian at Our Lady of Guadalupe Minor Seminary, we have a rule to help out with the cleaning up and washing the dishes after dinner. I hate, hate, and hate washing dishes by hand. One time, I was tempted to just rinse the food off dirty dishes with just water and no longer soap it. When I went to the lavatory to execute my hideous plan, I saw a poster mounted on the wall which says, "Wash the plate not because it’s dirty nor you’re told to wash it but because you love the person who will use it next” (Saint Teresa of Calcutta). 

As a religious and political group, the Pharisees taught that living the Law would bring God's kingdom closer to reality. To help them live out the Law, the Pharisees created more laws, rules, and guidelines to keep people from breaking the Law. As such, the Jews practiced ritual washings to serve as points of transition between the secular world and the sacred, between the time of work and the time of worship. Meal time celebrated community in the presence of God. Families and friends gathered together to share stories, news of the day, and gossip. But they always gathered as God's people; prayer became an integral part of the meal. Sometimes law and custom can be oppressively burdensome, so heavy that we can lose focus on right behavior. That is part of the conversation today as we return to the Gospel of Mark. The Pharisees show up as a foil to Jesus and his disciples. Some of Jesus’ disciples are eating with unwashed hands, something that all the Jews agreed should not be done. Jesus calls out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees through Isaiah’s prophesy "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." This isn’t about hand washing. It never was. Jesus is talking about the human heart. As humans, we need people like the Pharisees to give us guidelines, patterns to follow. We want the Pharisees to tell us how to live a virtuous life. But just as surely as we need and want this assurance, Jesus warns that our human desire to check off a list of virtues, good deeds, and right actions, is already missing the mark. Do you donate to mission outreaches because it seems like the "right" thing to do? Or do you donate or serve with the honest desire to connect with and show care for other human beings? Do you read the Bible because that’s what you’re supposed to do? Or do you read out of an honest and insatiable desire to encounter God? Do you go to Holy Mass because you do not want to go to hell? Or do you do so in order to thank God and strengthen your relationship with him? The good intentions behind an action or a gift are more important than the action or the gift itself. True love of God and neighbor begins in the heart and has its value from this interior disposition. Jesus is looking for something far deeper than legal observances. He wants us to be motivated by love, to live loving lives, to care and to unselfishly give of ourselves to others and to our Father in heaven. You see, following the rules is good and right. But avoiding oppressing thoughts, words, and deeds is always better. 

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