Fr. Joseph Raymund Patrick S. Sanchez, SJ
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 30, 2015
A story is told of a calf that, one day, had to cross through a virgin forest to be able to go back to its pasture. Being a beast of burden used to being guided with a yoke, now on its own, the calf made a lot of irrational choices as it thread through virgin territory—choosing inclined land over flat ground, rocky earth over fine soil, and making a lot of very sharp turns instead of smoother bends. As time went on, other animals in search of greener pastures chose to follow the fresh path despite its challenges, eventually creating a trail. No sooner would shepherds with their herds pass through this trail despite the difficulty in negotiating it, thus making it wider and more defined. And when a village sprouted in the vicinity, the path soon became a road through which people drove their carriages not without much cursing along the way. And as more and more people lived in the village, it soon became a town, and finally a city, making it necessary to develop the road into a highway. Many cars and buses plied the highway creating much traffic, cursing each other, as the route was not the best to get through the once virgin forest. For years, animals and men passed through the once freshly beaten trail that is now a highway, despite all the difficulty they had to go through.
The story just shows how we can be so stubborn in following a way as if it were the only way, without asking if it is the best way. This may be seen in the way we observe our many traditions, how we do our best to be faithful to the many practices that our ancestors have passed on to us even if we do not totally understand their significance or even if they seem to make life tougher for us.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus once again confronts the Pharisees and scribes whom he has considered to be hypocrites. The bone of contention: the ritual washings of hands before meals. The washing of hands has its health benefits, a practice that may prevent harmful germs from entering our bodies. Perhaps then, as cleanliness took on a religious meaning, more laws were added to the original statutes and commandments that Moses had handed down to the Israelites, to ensure cleanliness that now signified not merely health but holiness as well. So concerned were they with cleanliness that they had to include more laws to cover not only the hands but cups and jugs and kettles and even beds as well!
Poor Pharisees. Perhaps they were really a bunch of holy men who have dedicated their lives to the following of the Law to ensure that people remain faithful to their covenant with the Lord. These pious men surely did not want to appear to be hypocrites or self-righteous. All they wanted was that people remain pure in their commitment to God. But they fell into the trap when they started to believe that following every word of the law, to the very last letter, is the only way to remain faithful to God. They fell into the trap when they disregarded Moses’ warning: “[Y]ou shall not add to what I command you nor subtract from it.” They fell into the trap when they thought and taught as if the Law were the only way to God without asking if it was indeed the best way to the Lord. They fell into the trap when they started demanding a slavish and blind following of the Law.
Borrowing the words of Isaiah, Jesus reprimands them: “This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.” Tradition has been defined by human laws, relegating divine law to a secondary role. They have forgotten that true worship of God can only happen with a sincere heart.
We are not spared from this trap. Cleanliness is next to godliness we were told as kids. But what does this truly mean when viewed against a Christ who related much with the unclean in the eyes of the Pharisees–the sick, the outcasts and the sinner, or against the exhortation of Pope Francis for shepherds to smell like their sheep? Today’s gospel invites us to ask ourselves where our hearts lie as we try to be faithful to living out the Christian life. When we attend Sunday Mass, do we see ourselves growing in faith and friendship with God or is it done to fulfill a family expectation or to be faithful to an agreement among friends for a weekly meet-up? When we go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, do we merely confess a log of ways we have broken the law, including how frequently we have broken them, or is it out of remorse over broken relationships that we sincerely wish to restore? When we pray on our knees, do we do so as a form of sacrifice to pay for our many sins, or is it a sign of total surrender to God’s will and desire?
“Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves,” James exhorts us in our second reading today. But more than looking at what our lips profess and our hands do, we are invited to look into our hearts, for as Jesus says in the gospel, it is from within us, from our hearts, that good and evil come. As we live out our sacramental life as Christians, we therefore ask, where our hearts lie. Do they lie in the faithful observance of what the Church asks of us or in the deep desire to be faithful friends of the Lord as expressed through loving service of others? For after all, our faith ought to be a faithfulness to God and not to a set of statutes and commandments.
Fr. Weyms Sanchez, SJ is missioned to East Timor and is currently the Principal of Colegio Santo Ignacio de Loiola. Be our mission partner by visiting the JesuitAid website.