22d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Aug.
28, 1994
Mark
7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23College 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
|
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)
|
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment