My Dear People,
Having completed five weeks of study on the Eucharist Discourse of John 6, we return this Sunday to the Readings of the Gospel from Mark. Our passage is a highly edited excerpt from Jesus’s debate with the Pharisees over the customs of the elders. Clearly, Jesus is not mad at the Pharisees because they are overly scrupulous adhering to God’s Law, He is upset with them because they “disregarded God’s Commandment.” Instead, they “cling to human tradition.” The Pharisaic tradition had “added to” the laws of Moses in contradiction to what Moses commanded in our First Reading. Still, their customs—like washing hands before every meal—would have been relatively benign or slightly helpful were it not for the fact that the Pharisees had become fixated on observing these customs to the neglect of the central commandments and principles of the law—things like “judgment and mercy and faith” (Matt 23:23).
Jesus wants to call the Pharisees—and us—back from a fixation on external observances to focus on the heart of the law, which is the proper ordering of the soul.
In the Old Testament, there were many things that could ritually defile a person—contact with the dead; feces with an unclean (inedible) animal, and so on. This was a kind of pedagogy by which God taught Israel how to associate moral wrongdoing with death, decay, and the distasteful. In the end, wrongdoing (sin) does actually result in these things.
However, the point of the law was to teach the right ordering of the soul. Ultimately, it is the interior act of the soul (what comes out of the heart) and not what materially happens to the body that “defiles” or “profanes” a person in the sight of God.
Interior acts of the soul are what distances a person from God and makes one “unclean,” “defiled,” or “profane” in God’s eyes. It is more important to eliminate these interior and exterior acts than it is to observe time-honored cultural customs.
However, a movement’s unfolding guidelines makes it clear , it is not less difficult, but more difficult to eliminate things like evil thoughts, pride, and covetousness from our souls than it is to remember to wash our hands before eating. Regulations about exterior cleanliness are much easier to keep than purity of the soul.
So, let us not think for one minute that Jesus came to dumb down the moral law and give permission for everyone to do as they liked, provided they believed in Him. Our Lord is quite clear about the seriousness of sin and clearly identifies its source—the human heart.
Because God is also the great heart doctor, is there any hope for us? As St. Paul will later explain: “hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). Having received the Holy Spirit through Baptism, we have divine power residing in us which enables us to truly love God (which Moses already identified as the heart of the law) and our neighbor. The unfailing love from God cleanses our hearts from the twelve different kinds of “evil thought” that Jesus listed in our Gospel reading. As the author of Hebrews says, alluding to Baptism: “our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil conscience” (Hew 10:22).
If we have defiled ourselves after Baptism, there is a “second Baptism”—a visit to the confessional, which we can utilize this week.
At this Mass and in this coming week, let’s try to “humbly welcome the word” of God. Let’s do an examination of conscience on the twelve different kinds of evil thoughts Jesus enumerated. Let’s spend time in prayer asking God to stir up the Spirit within us so that love, and not defiling evil, will flow out of our hearts.
What the Gospel is saying to us, is: if we blame others for doing wrong, and we have no control of our negative thoughts or animosity toward that person, we are no better off.
The battle must be within the mind and in your life, in expelling negative thoughts from your mind, especially if you feel justified for the hatred, dislike of someone who did a very “evil act.” When you keep negative thoughts in your mind, you give permission to the devil to rule your life. The devil always starts from “the thought”, If we control the thought, and eliminate every single negative, or evil thought that comes to our mind, we will be free. Eliminating evil thoughts is how we will stop from being defiled.
This is what Jesus is speaking about in the Gospel today.
[Source On Reflection on Sunday Mass Reading for Year B by John Bergsma]
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Vincent Clemente