Cycle B - Year II:  

2 September 2018: Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

(Liturgical Color: Green)

Readings:

First Reading:        Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8

Second Reading:   James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27

Gospel:Please Read  Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Love God from the heart!

It is true that traditions and customs are noble and admirable when observed and practiced with the sincerity of the heart. Because, as the great poet Helen Keller said, "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart."

In the Gospel incident for this Sunday, our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us that what comes from within gives meaning and importance to our external actions.

According to St. Mark, the scribes and pharisees were upset with Jesus because He

allowed His disciples to break with their ritual traditions by eating with unclean hands. Now remember that washing of the hands before meal was an important religious ritual for the Jews. And in their zeal for holiness many elders developed many other elaborate traditions which become a burden for the people to carry out in their everyday lives.

Bear in mind that Jesus was not primarily concerned with justifying His disciples' omission of washing their hands before eating, but instead He used this incident to clarify what true holiness is in the very eyes of God. And so Jesus accused the scribes and pharisees of hypocrisy because they appear to obey God's word in their external practices while they inwardly harbor evil desires and intentions. So Jesus reminded them of Isaiah's prophesy: "This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vein do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts."

Unfortunately, this attitude of "hypocrisy" in serving the Lord is still with us even in our generation. For example, many of those who profess their faith in Jesus are so much focused on external rituals and practices but forget the reason and meaning for observing them.

So then, the message of this Sunday's liturgy is a timely reminder that religious traditions are practices are good, but then they become meaningless without our personal intimacy with the Lord. In today's Gospel incident, our Lord Jesus is actually reminding us that external rituals of cleaning are really empty physical acts without inner purification from within us. Such "inner purification" is essentially the work of the Holy Spirit in a human heart that is open and receptive to divine intervention.

In sum, our Lord Jesus Christ reminds us that true holiness is first and foremost a matter of the heart, a personal intimacy with Jesus our Lord and God. And we become close to God primarily because of His grace rather than own merits.

A blessed Sunday to us all. And thank you for a moment with God.

Ad Jesum per Mariam!