The Spirit of the Law

TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

August 29, Sunday

 

How do you experience laws, especially God’s commandments? Many people consider them as something coming from outside themselves, as burdens imposed on them. Of course, if they are outside you, you cannot love them, you feel like rejecting them or observe only the absolute minimum required. If we understand that their inspiration is love of God and love and respect for people, then they can become a part of ourselves and live in our hearts. Let us ask the Lord that with generosity and love we may go far beyond the letter of the law.

 

First Reading: Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-8

Now listen, Israel, listen carefully to the rules and regulations that I am teaching you to follow so that you may live and enter and take possession of the land that God, the God-of-Your-Fathers, is giving to you. Don’t add a word to what I command you, and don’t remove a word from it. Keep the commands of God, your God, that I am commanding you.

Pay attention: I’m teaching you the rules and regulations that God commanded me, so that you may live by them in the land you are entering to take up ownership. Keep them. Practice them. You’ll become wise and understanding. When people hear and see what’s going on, they’ll say, “What a great nation! So wise, so understanding! We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Yes. What other great nation has gods that are intimate with them the way God, our God, is with us, always ready to listen to us? And what other great nation has rules and regulations as good and fair as this Revelation that I’m setting before you today?

 

Second Reading: James 1:17-18,21-22, 27

So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

 Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

 

Gospel: Mark7:1-8,14-15,21-23

The Source of Your Pollution

The Pharisees, along with some religion scholars who had come from Jerusalem, gathered around him. They noticed that some of his disciples weren’t being careful with ritual washings before meals. The Pharisees—Jews in general, in fact—would never eat a meal without going through the motions of a ritual hand-washing, with an especially vigorous scrubbing if they had just come from the market (to say nothing of the scourings they’d give jugs and pots and pans).

The Pharisees and religion scholars asked, “Why do your disciples flout the rules, showing up at meals without washing their hands?”

Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right about frauds like you, hit the bull’s-eye in fact:

These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
    but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they are worshiping me,
    but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
    for teaching whatever suits their fancy,
Ditching God’s command
    and taking up the latest fads.”

Jesus called the crowd together again and said, “Listen now, all of you—take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life; it’s what you vomit—that’s the real pollution.”

He went on: “It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution.”

 

Prayer
Father, God of the ever-new covenant,
you have tied us to yourself
with leading strings of lasting love;
the words you speak to us
are spirit and life.
Open our hearts to your words,
that they may touch us
in the deepest of ourselves.
May they move us to serve you
not in a slavish way
but as your sons and daughters
who love you and whom you have set free
through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Reflection:

Is Sunday Mass an ‘Obligation?

The evangelist Mark, who writes for an audience in Rome that did not know the customs of the Jews, now feels the need to explain to his readers this obsession of the Jews with the ritual purifications. The Jews paid great attention to the meticulous execution of the ritual washings, and insisted on its scrupulous execution, but they forgot the meaning of the rite itself and lost its value. We must be careful also about these scrupulously executed rites in our liturgical celebrations because if their meaning is forgotten, they can be dangerous. The Jews felt satisfied when they went through the rite of purification, although the value of this rite, the rite’s memory was lost. Their original intention was to remind the people of God to be thankful to God for his providential care. A rite of purification ended with a beautiful prayer of thanksgiving. But as the ages passed, the scribes and the pharisees interpreted the laws to benefit their interests. Instead of making it as an opportunity to thank God, it was presented as an obligation, failure of which amounted to breaking the law. Similar misinterpretations and obligatory rituals also happen to us. Where there is true faith that comes from genuine love, nothing needs to be imposed as obligatory. When we try to fulfil what is obligatory in the Church, our actions are based on the rules and regulations and not based on love. Our “days of obligation” in the Church is an example. Are we participating in the Sunday liturgy to fulfil an obligation or because of our love for the Lord and love for the community? When our objective is only to meet the obligations, we are guided by fear and not by love. When the tradition is stripped of meaning, it becomes a meaningless gesture. The Pharisees became slaves of their religious traditions, and not even Jesus was able to set them free. And Jesus calls them hypocrites. For the Pharisee, the pure hands were those that performed the ritual to its perfection; but for Jesus the pure hands are those that did works of love. It is the works of charity that would purify our hands. We should pay attention not to becomes slaves to the traditions while living our liturgical life in faith. There are people who are afraid to take communion in the hand because they think that their hands are impure. What makes us believe that our tongues that speak all the wrongs about our brethren are purer and better than our hands? What does it mean for you to participate in the liturgical life of the community? Are you participating on the Sunday Mass as an obligation, out of fear of punishment?

Video available on Youtube: Is Sunday Mass an ‘Obligation?