Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Christ accuses the Pharisees in a way that at first seems easy to understand: “You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” We often hear this accusation ourselves as Catholics, and may even find ourselves making this criticism. We live in a church full of traditions and customs, many of which can be difficult to understand and follow, and it might be easy to hear in this Gospel that Christ would have us do away with it all. It might be tempting for us, who live in an age of the new, in a society that explicitly and strenuously rejects the ways of the past, to read Christ’s words as a call to leave behind complicated old ways in favor of a new simplicity. That is not what is happening here. The contrast is not between the old and the new, between simplicity and complexity, but rather between God’s commands and human teachings, between divine tradition and human tradition.
We can understand this contrast more deeply when we examine why Christ rejects the Pharisaical teaching on uncleanness. Christ does not accuse the Pharisees of being backward or stodgy. He does not accuse them of being too strict in their moralizing. He does not condemn the fact that they care about external things, in this case, washing before meals. He rather condemns the fact that they use their teaching as a shield against the truth, as a defense against meeting the God who sees the heart. “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” The Pharisees focus on what they can most easily control, the externals of their lives, rather than on the struggle between good and evil within their own hearts, which is difficult to understand and face. Focusing on the external facts of ritual cleansing apparently allows them to ignore the temptations toward “evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly” that lie within them.
Put this way, perhaps we can understand the choice of the Pharisees more sympathetically. Who of us wants to admit that we too have hearts pulled by all sorts of temptations? How many of us have the courage constantly to look ourselves in the mirror with absolute and unsparing honesty? Above all, how many of us are so rooted in God’s love for us that we can stand before his all-seeing eye in all our sinfulness and weakness without any shame or discouragement? It is much easier to distract ourselves from our faults, to hide from God. There are so many ways to do so. We can hide in worrying about the business of others. We can hide in entertainments and hobbies, crowding out the silence of self-reflection with exciting noise. We can hide in our goals and plans, pushing forward toward the future to avoid the present. And of course, as the Gospel notes, we can hide in arguments about the minute externals of our lives, even within the church.
In the face of our fear, Christ calls us to courage. We must not hide. He calls us to see all those things that come from within us and defile us, admit them, and then hand them over to him for forgiveness and purification. We can do so with confidence knowing that he has seen everything already, even and especially the things we don’t want to see in ourselves, and seeing all, he loves us. We can be sure that if we take the path of courage, and refuse to hide in any external things, he will meet us, heal us, and lift us into an eternal life where we will never want to hide from all-knowing love.
Fr. Rampino is studying at the Catholic University in Washington with residence at Blessed Sacrament Church in Alexandria.
Take the path of courage
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Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Christ accuses the Pharisees in a way that at first seems easy to understand: “You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” We often hear this accusation ourselves as Catholics, and may even find ourselves making this criticism. We live in a church full of traditions and customs, many of which can be difficult to understand and follow, and it might be easy to hear in this Gospel that Christ would have us do away with it all. It might be tempting for us, who live in an age of the new, in a society that explicitly and strenuously rejects the ways of the past, to read Christ’s words as a call to leave behind complicated old ways in favor of a new simplicity. That is not what is happening here. The contrast is not between the old and the new, between simplicity and complexity, but rather between God’s commands and human teachings, between divine tradition and human tradition.
We can understand this contrast more deeply when we examine why Christ rejects the Pharisaical teaching on uncleanness. Christ does not accuse the Pharisees of being backward or stodgy. He does not accuse them of being too strict in their moralizing. He does not condemn the fact that they care about external things, in this case, washing before meals. He rather condemns the fact that they use their teaching as a shield against the truth, as a defense against meeting the God who sees the heart. “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” The Pharisees focus on what they can most easily control, the externals of their lives, rather than on the struggle between good and evil within their own hearts, which is difficult to understand and face. Focusing on the external facts of ritual cleansing apparently allows them to ignore the temptations toward “evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly” that lie within them.
Put this way, perhaps we can understand the choice of the Pharisees more sympathetically. Who of us wants to admit that we too have hearts pulled by all sorts of temptations? How many of us have the courage constantly to look ourselves in the mirror with absolute and unsparing honesty? Above all, how many of us are so rooted in God’s love for us that we can stand before his all-seeing eye in all our sinfulness and weakness without any shame or discouragement? It is much easier to distract ourselves from our faults, to hide from God. There are so many ways to do so. We can hide in worrying about the business of others. We can hide in entertainments and hobbies, crowding out the silence of self-reflection with exciting noise. We can hide in our goals and plans, pushing forward toward the future to avoid the present. And of course, as the Gospel notes, we can hide in arguments about the minute externals of our lives, even within the church.
In the face of our fear, Christ calls us to courage. We must not hide. He calls us to see all those things that come from within us and defile us, admit them, and then hand them over to him for forgiveness and purification. We can do so with confidence knowing that he has seen everything already, even and especially the things we don’t want to see in ourselves, and seeing all, he loves us. We can be sure that if we take the path of courage, and refuse to hide in any external things, he will meet us, heal us, and lift us into an eternal life where we will never want to hide from all-knowing love.
Fr. Rampino is studying at the Catholic University in Washington with residence at Blessed Sacrament Church in Alexandria.
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