Homily
for September 3, 2006
Liturgical Year B - Cycle II
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Fr. John Carney Topic:
The Love for God, not of the Law.
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Reading I
Dt 4:1-2, 6-8
Moses said to the people: “Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees
which I am teaching you to observe, that you may live, and may enter in
and take possession of the land which the LORD, the God of your
fathers, is giving you. In your observance of the commandments of the
LORD, your God, which I enjoin upon you, you shall not add to what I
command you nor subtract from it. Observe them carefully, for thus will
you give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations, who
will hear of all these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is truly a
wise and intelligent people.’ For what great nation is there that has
gods so close to it as the LORD, our God, is to us whenever we call
upon him? Or what great nation has statutes and decrees that are as
just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?”
Gospel
Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
When the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem
gathered around Jesus, they observed that some of his disciples ate
their meals with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands. -. For the
Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews, do not eat without carefully washing
their hands, keeping the tradition of the elders. And on coming from
the marketplace they do not eat without purifying themselves. And there
are many other things that they have traditionally observed, the
purification of cups and jugs and kettles and beds. .- So the Pharisees
and scribes questioned him, “Why do your disciples not follow the
tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?” He
responded, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is
written: 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. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”
He summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and
understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that
person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.
“From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity,
theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy,
blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they
defile.”
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Jesus is obviously disgusted, unhappy, and angry. “These people
honor
me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me”. Just a little
bit of background on the situation that existed at the time of Christ,
when Christ walked this earth. There were really two aspects of the
law. There was the written law that we heard about in the first reading
from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. That was promulgated by Moses and it
was the law that God gave his people, the Hebrew people, and later the
Jewish people. That law is the Torah. It makes sense. Many of the laws
seemed rather odd to us because they had to do with dietary cleanliness
etc., but the law was made to keep the people healthy as well as holy.
Jewish people and before them the Hebrews, followed the law carefully
up until about the 5th Century BC. It said in Deuteronomy, “Observe the
law carefully.” Not
scrupulously, not compulsively, but carefully. They did their best to
follow the law.
Around the 5th Century before Christ, a new group emerged of
Judaism,
known as the Scribes. They were legal experts. They studied the law. I
guess they thought they protected it because they said that it was so
important that no Jew break any law, that they’d better make new laws
to protect the law. The Scribes added over 640 other laws, many of them
concerned with the Sabbath. In effect, theologians say, the law was
here, (making a circle with his hands), and they built a fence around
it. You couldn’t even get close to violating God’s law because of these
other laws, many of them very strange. Some of the Sabbath laws I
remember off hand, you could not walk more than so many paces from your
house on the Sabbath. You couldn't help an animal that was in distress.
You could only do enough to keep the animal from dying, but you’d have
to wait for the day after the Sabbath to really care for the animal
properly. The Sabbath, as on example, became a day of burden. Jesus
says in the Scripture that I made the Sabbath for you, it is to serve
you, and you are not to serve the Sabbath.
That’s the situation. The Scribes had imposed this oral
tradition that
was later in effect, codified and promulgated and the people then had
all these laws. There were so many of them, the average person couldn’t
even know them all. He was violating things left and right that he
wasn’t even aware of doing. In addition to that, the piety of the
people had increased at varying times in their history. They tried to
imitate some of those specific laws that were meant only for the
priests. The Jews, you know, like most people, hold their priests up as
kind of the perfect example. The Jews, like most people …(Pauses to
wait for laughter.). Thank you. That doesn’t fly anymore at all does
it? It never should have, but at least now we’re aware of the
weaknesses of our pastors and leaders today.
Some of the laws that were ritual laws, had to do with the
priests,
such as washing their hands before offering the sacrifice in the
Temple. The people took this on themselves, and again made it more
difficult. Their purpose I guess, was noble, to please God, but the
effect was that religion had, to some degree, degenerated into external
mindless ritual practices. Their hearts were far from God because their
mind was all wrapped up in dotting all the i’s and crossing all the
t’s. Jewish law, as told in Deuteronomy, was intended to guide the
people to holiness but the laws became an end in themselves. Jesus
tells us that it’s not following the law that tells us whether one is
good or bad. It is not the external practices of religion, but what is
in your heart, the motive of your heart. “You fools, you cleanse the
outside of the bowl while the inside is filled with filth.” The
Pharisees, whom Jesus confronted today, saw evil as something outside
of themselves, a violation of the laws. Jesus reminds them that the
real evil is in their heart. The Pharisees attacked everything and
everyone outside of themselves. They were self-righteous. One of the
greatest sins that Jesus identifies, is to be self-righteous. From the
early church and still today, nothing really has changed, or at least
there are some similarities. They are still bickering about rituals and
laws. This particular Gospel that we are looking at today, confronts
those whose conscience are too scrupulous. It’s my experience, and I
think most of you would agree, probably the greater problem today is
folks with consciences that are too lax but we’ll leave that for
another day.
For those who are scrupulous, religion is a head game, not a
heart
game. I know this from some confessions. I hear confession all the time
and sometimes I’m frustrated. “Bless me Father for I missed mass.” I
know that I have some very dedicated Christian in front of me and I’ll
say, “Well, why did you do that?” “Well, I was sick. I was in the
hospital.” I think that there are some people who would wake up after
being in a coma for a year and confess that they missed mass 52 times.
Here’s the problem. Why do they confess that when it’s not a sin? The
problem is that they are trying to dot the i’s and cross the t’s to
please God or to achieve salvation by following laws. When one is
scrupulous, one doesn’t trust God. They don’t trust his mercy so
they’re scrupulous, or obsessive.
I had one fellow, I had no idea who he was, I was newly
ordained as a
priest and he came to confession every week. He’d say, “I committed the
sin of lust.”
He was very old. As a matter of fact, he had a walker and it took him a
while to get into the confessional. He would say, “I committed the sin
of lust 786 times this week.”
At that age, I don’t know if he was bragging or complaining. I’d say,
“What are you doing?” He’d say, “Well, I looked at these pictures.”
“Where?” “In the newspaper. In Time Magazine.” Any time he saw a
picture of a woman, he thought that was a sin. I’d give him his three
Hail Marys and it was the same thing next week. I’d try to explain and
he’d get mad at me for being a liberal priest. That hasn’t happened to
me very often. Finally, I was wasn’t helping him, so I said, “Do you
think one Hail Mary is too much penance?” He said, “No, it’s not
enough.” “I agree. Say 757 Hail Mary’s”
“What?” After that, I never heard him again. He never came back. About
two years later, at a priest’s conference, a neighboring priest said,
“You know I’ve got this guy that comes in…” I said, “Give him 800 Hail
Mary’s. He’ll go to the next parish.”
He was scrupulous. People who are scrupulous are very
unhappy because
they are worried. They’re compulsive about their love of God and
scrupulosity and being compulsive has nothing to do with loving. It’s
just the opposite.
Also, people bicker. It’s amazing the amount of bickering
that occurs
within the church, especially, to be honest with you, among clergy. We
are given God’s teaching in Scripture, in Sacred Tradition and the
Magisterium. What a blessing that is. God’s ways are not burdensome. We
are taught and God speaks to us today through his church to help us.
Really, it liberates us. We don’t have to figure out everything, we can
listen to what the Lord tells us in Scripture, in Sacred Tradition and
in the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the church, and it makes
our lives easier. Yet, people bicker. They’ll take one little thing and
they won’t let it go. St. Paul said, “Remind people of these things and
charge them before God to stop disputing about words. This serves no
useful purpose since it harms those who listen. Be eager to present
yourself as acceptable to God, a workman who causes no disgrace,
imparting the word of truth without deviation.” St. James says in the
Scripture, he warns against those who have a ‘passion for polemics and
controversies. From these come evil, envy, dissention, slander, evil
suspicions—in a word, the bickering of men with twisted minds who have
lost all sense of the truth.” That’s pretty strong stuff. Jesus reminds
us that we must follow the law because it is for our good. Don’t smoke,
you’ll get lung problems. Don’t break God’s law, your soul will be
sick.
We don’t worship the law, we worship God. We love God. We
don’t love
the law. We love the law in the extent it leads us to God. It’s all
really simple. All good comes from the heart and all bad as well. If
your heart is filled with bitterness and pride, then all the external
practices in the world won’t make you or me holy.
I’d like to conclude with Paul’s wonderful passage from
Corinthians.
“Set your
hearts on the greater gifts. I will show you the way, which surpasses
all the others. If I speak with human tongues and angelic as well, but
do not have love, I am a clanging gong, a noisy cymbal. If I have the
gift of prophecy and, with full knowledge, comprehend all mysteries, if
I have faith great enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am
nothing. If I give everything I have to feed the poor and hand over my
body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
I would ask you to listen to these next words and give
yourself a test.
See how you are doing and I’ll do the same.
Love is
patient. Love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, it
is not snobbish. Love is never rude, it is not self-seeking. It is not
prone to anger; neither does it brood over injuries. Love does not
rejoice with what is wrong but rejoices with the trust. There is no
limit to love’s forbearance, its power to endure. Love never fails. The
heart never fails.