Wednesday February 9, 2022

Wednesday of 5th Week in Ordinary Time

 

Pure and Sincere Hearts     

The Old Testament heaps praise on Solomon as the typical wise man, who understood the meaning of life, of the world, of right and wrong. People came to him from distant countries to seek his advice. And yet, as we know, in later life at least, his wisdom was not powerful enough to keep him humbly oriented towards God. His heart became divided.

Divided too, were the hearts of the Pharisees, as Jesus points out in the Gospel; their interior attitude did not correspond to their outward practices. The question of pure/impure was very important for the early Church, as it was one of the strongest traditions of the Jews and a point of contention for them. Hence, the Christians coming from Jewry asked themselves whether they could eat from the same table with non-Jews. According to Mark, in the light of creation that sees all foods as created good and pure, in the kingdom the rules about food are abolished.

                                

First Reading:1 Kings 10:1-10 

The queen of Sheba heard about Solomon and his connection with the Name of God. She came to put his reputation to the test by asking tough questions. She made a grand and showy entrance into Jerusalem—camels loaded with spices, a huge amount of gold, and precious gems. She came to Solomon and talked about all the things that she cared about, emptying her heart to him. Solomon answered everything she put to him—nothing stumped him. When the queen of Sheba experienced for herself Solomon’s wisdom and saw with her own eyes the palace he had built, the meals that were served, the impressive array of court officials and sharply dressed waiters, the lavish crystal, and the elaborate worship extravagant with Whole-Burnt-Offerings at the steps leading up to The Temple of God, it took her breath away.

She said to the king, “It’s all true! Your reputation for accomplishment and wisdom that reached all the way to my country is confirmed. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself; they didn’t exaggerate! Such wisdom and elegance—far more than I could ever have imagined. Lucky the men and women who work for you, getting to be around you every day and hear your wise words firsthand! And blessed be God, your God, who took such a liking to you and made you king. Clearly, God’s love for Israel is behind this, making you king to keep a just order and nurture a God-pleasing people.”

She then gave the king four and a half tons of gold, and also sack after sack of spices and expensive gems. There hasn’t been a cargo of spices like that since that shipload the queen of Sheba brought to King Solomon.

 

Gospel: Mark 7:14-23 

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.”

When he was back home after being with the crowd, his disciples said, “We don’t get it. Put it in plain language.”

Jesus said, “Are you being willfully stupid? Don’t you see that what you swallow can’t contaminate you? It doesn’t enter your heart but your stomach, works its way through the intestines, and is finally flushed.” (That took care of dietary quibbling; Jesus was saying that all foods are fit to eat.)

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 everlasting love;
the words you speak to us are spirit and life.
May your Spirit make us look at the commandments
not as a set of observances.
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:
We believe in a forgiving God
Where does evil come from and is there a solution to eliminate it from our lives? While addressing the issue of impurities arising from neglecting the traditional rituals, Jesus focuses on the human heart, the abode of all choices – both good and bad. The religious leaders taught the people to observe the laws and traditions to avoid the punishment of God and to please him.
Ritual purity was meant to protect the chosen people of God from any contacts with anything that was associated with pagans – non-Jews or unclean animals. The creation story in the book of Genesis tells us that God created everything and he saw that everything that he created was good. But later, humans interpreted some people and some animals as unclean and any physical contact with them would make one impure.
Do our religious observances, prayers and even attending Mass arise out of fear of God’s punishment? If we go to Mass to fulfil the days of obligation, how are we any different from the religious scholars of Jesus’ time?
Jesus points out the source of true defilement — evil desires which come from inside a person’s thoughts and intentions. When Cain was jealous of his brother Abel, God warned him to guard his heart: “Sin is couching at the door; it’s desire is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7). Do we allow sinful desires to couch at our doors? Not to succumb to sinful desires or thoughts, there is no better option than to seek refuge in God. Jesus in the desert, Jesus in prayer teaches us to spend time with the Father, to confront the forces of evil. The Lord waits for us to transform and purify our hearts through his Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Do we believe in the power of God’s love to transform your heart?
Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote that virtue is the transformation of instinct or passion. Courage and hope, for example, are transformations of the aggressive instinct; love is the transformation of desire. What comes out of person depends on how one transforms one’s experience. Our faith is a transformation of our experience of God’s love and the response we make to the world, to others, and to God.
Thus my relationship with Jesus helps me to transform those bad stuff into good, curses into blessings and sufferings into prayer.

 

Video available on Youtube: We believe in a forgiving God