Homily for 22d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
22d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Aug. 28, 1994

Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
College of New Rochelle (New York)

This weekend I’m in Champaign, Ill., for the funeral of Deacon Bob Ulbrich of Holy Cross Parish.  The Sunday preaching is being done by a missionary priest from Uganda.  So, as per my usual practice when I’m not preaching, here’s one from the archives.

“Nothing that enters a man from outside can make him impure; what comes out of him, and only that, constitutes impurity” (Mark 7: 15).

After a 5-week layover in St. John’s Gospel, our journey thru St. Mark resumes.  We have more controversy today:  not about Eucharistic doctrine, as in the last 2 weeks, but about ritual and morality.

Moses (giver of the Torah)

statue in Library of Congress

The Torah contains elements of the moral law, such as the 10 Commandments, and elements that deal with ritual, i.e., the correct way to worship.  The concept of clean-unclean, or “pure-impure” in our Lectionary translation, has to do with correct worship, not only with morality.  The main effect of being unclean was that one could not take part in public worship; secondly, many objects one might touch, including food and utensils, also became unclean.  Some uncleanness could be removed by the passage of time and a ritual purification; other uncleanness, by bathing.

It is the latter, purification by washing, that comes up from the Pharisees and the scribes today.  Over the centuries they had developed elaborate rules to guarantee their cleanness—not in a hygienic sense but in a ritual sense.  We must point out, too, that despite their gospel image, most of the Pharisees and scribes were sincere, devout, and upright men.

For some of them, however, religious devotion must have become a matter merely of external ritual, as tho God should be pleased with them because they washed correctly, wore prayer tassels, and avoided alleged sinners.  But externals are empty without mind and heart.  Those of you who read or watch Shakespeare may remember the scene in Hamlet when the king kneels to try to pray for repentance and forgiveness.  He finally gives up, saying, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.  Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (III, iii, 94-98).

And Jesus quotes Isaiah to the same effect:  “This people pays me lip service, but their hearts are far from me” (Mark 7:6).  God wants clean hearts, not clean hands.

Ritualism is not unknown among Catholics.  Do you remember the 1st Godfather movie?  Near the end, Michael Corleone is taking part in his nephew’s Baptism while, at the same time, his cohorts are wiping out all his gangland rivals.  Very powerfully, the film switches repeatedly from one scene of ritual cleansing to another of murder.  Without going into sacramental theology, we can say that a lot of Catholics see no connection between an external rite of salvation and an internal commitment to the One who saves.  More typical examples than Mafiosi might be those who bring their babies for Baptism tho they’re not married, pro-choicers who receive Communion regularly, Sunday worshippers who pay unjust wages or practice racism. 

In the breviary yesterday the Office of Readings offered us a passage from St. John Chrysostom, patriarch of Constantinople and doctor of the Church late in the 4th century.  St. John takes to task Christians who give lavish, showy gifts to the church, like silk vestments and gold vessels, but neglect the hungry, the naked, pilgrims, and prisoners.  “God does not want golden vessels,” he says, “but golden hearts” (LOH 4:182-83).

The Seven Works of Mercy

(Frans II Francken)

Once upon a time we all abstained from meat on Fridays—which we still do during Lent.  We’ve all heard about folks who “sacrificed” by eating swordfish or lobster instead of meat.  Not exactly what the Church had in mind, of course, with the law of Friday penance.

When Pope Paul VI changed the law of penance in 1966, it was with the hope that we would act more maturely, would internalize the obligation to do penance, which, the Pope reminded us, is an obligation commanded by God.  He urged us to exercise penance by faithfulness to our duties in life, by patience in unavoidable suffering, and by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—all of these motivated by interior conviction and not just by a specific external law.

What Jesus demands of us, likewise, is internalization. When the Pope tells us, “Repent,” which is the 1st word of his decree on the Friday penance, he’s only quoting Jesus.  Jesus is uncomfortably specific today.  The saintliest of Christians do not completely measure up to the standards of cleanness or purity that Jesus raises.  We are to be clean inside, in the heart.  Whatever is truly unclean, whatever truly makes our worship of God worthless, comes from our hearts:  sensuality, all kinds of selfish carnal desires, envy of others’ good qualities, greed for more and more possessions, deceitfulness, stubbornness, arrogance….  There’s quite an examination of conscience in Mark 7:21-22.  After considering it, who could find in ritual precision, or any merely human tradition, the way of holiness?

I’ll decline the opportunity to launch into a consideration of tradition—an act of kindness on my part even tho it deprives you of an occasion to practice the virtue of patience.  If we have heard Jesus speaking to our hearts, we’ve heard all we need to hear for now.  May his words move us to act as his disciples and to give God thanks for the grace of forgiveness.