Homily: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B
Friends,
in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus criticizes the scribes and Pharisees who were
overly concerned with the “purity laws”.
At that time, one could only enter the temple for liturgical worship if
one remained free from contact with things designated as impure (that is,
things not worthy of being in the presence of God). The purity laws defined both what was impure
and the rules about how one could ensure that he/she could be restored to
purity after contact with impure things.
These included rules about washing hands and eating utensils among many
other things. The “experts in the law”
saw it as their duty to ensure that God’s people remained “holy”—that is, set
apart for God—by striving to ensure that God’s people did not come into contact
with unholy things. This task was all
the more urgent because the land in which they lived was occupied by the Romans
and their pagan religious practices.
It
seems ironic that today there is a special emphasis on some of these same
practices—washing hands and purifying surfaces—as we battle this pandemic. The reasons are obviously different: today,
we are battling a crisis of public health; then, they were battling to keep
their religion pure. Nevertheless, I
think that we can see some similarities between the situations. In both, we can become overly concerned with
the actions, themselves, instead of the purposes behind the actions.
Jesus
is criticizing both the laws and how the Pharisees and scribes are enforcing
them. For the Pharisees and scribes, the
laws were akin to magic spells: rituals that, when performed correctly, made
supernatural things happen automatically.
But this isn’t how religion works.
Rather, religion is about external actions that both bring about and
express an internal disposition. It is
not magic, but rather a framework in which we order our lives towards our end,
which is to be in right relationship with God.
Jesus criticizes the purity laws, and the scribes and Pharisees who
strove to enforce them, because they were imposed as an external action only:
while neglecting the internal disposition that they should have brought about.
Thus,
Jesus’ teaching: instead of worrying about whether hands and eating utensils
were purified after contact with external things, we should be concerned about
whether our hearts are purified from desires that defile our relationship with
God and with others.
This
points us back to our first reading and the message of Moses to the Israelite
people who are about to enter the Promised Land. Moses is about to begin his listing of the
commandments of God that the people will be required to observe when they
settle in the Promised Land. These will
not be arbitrary laws, but rather laws that will remind them of their
relationship with God and of what they need to do in order to maintain that
relationship. These, Moses tells them,
are guidelines for flourishing in the land under God’s protection. Just like health experts teach us what to do
and what not to do in order to remain healthy, so these laws would teach the
people how to keep their hearts ordered rightly towards God, to whom they owed
their gratitude and worship.
Saint
James, in his letter from which we read in the second reading, emphasizes the
positive nature of the commandments that God has given us to follow. God has shown us the right way to live in
this world and so prepare ourselves to receive the grace of eternal life that
Jesus has made possible for us. Therefore,
we must live out these commandments in our lives: not as if it was a
restriction forced on us by God and which is otherwise empty of meaning, but
rather as a gift from God, that teaches us how to live rightly, in communion
with God and with one another.
Does
all this mean that we should abandon ritual acts so that they do not become
ends in themselves? No, of course
not! As Catholics, we believe in the
importance of sacraments: that is, actions that are visible signs of invisible
realities. When I make the sign of the
cross, when I genuflect before the tabernacle, when I bless myself with holy
water… I make an outward sign of an invisible reality: that is, that I believe
in God and that, through these outward signs, I am in connection with him. We all know, of course, that we can perform
these outward signs mindlessly, thus emptying them of their meaning. And we can even impose these practices on
others without teaching them to have the internal dispositions that the actions
are meant to express. This, however,
doesn’t mean that the signs themselves should be discarded; but rather that the
meaning that they convey must be restored to them, which we do when we repent
and refocus our minds and hearts on God and teach others to do the same.
Friends,
as we continue our daily work of living as disciples of Jesus, we must strive
every day to ensure that our internal dispositions reflect what our external
actions display. This means that we
examine ourselves each day to see whether our actions corresponded with our beliefs
and whether we did whatever we did with the right disposition of heart. We ask God for his wisdom and light to guide
us and to conform our hearts more and more to his commandments so that all that
we do—and especially our religious practices—may be authentic expressions of our
faith, and not empty show. Then, each
day we begin again: trusting in God’s grace to help us live authentic lives of
faith.
As
we come again to receive the Bread of Life that we encounter in this Eucharist,
let us humble ourselves in gratitude before him: gratitude that he has desired
us and has provided us with every grace to remain close to him. And let us demonstrate that humble gratitude
by striving to live authentically as his disciples as we await the day when he
returns to take us home to himself.
Given at St. Joan of Arc Parish: Kokomo, IN – August 29th,
2021
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