Homilies
Twenty–second Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 3, 2006
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What’s the Meaning?
Today’s readings for the Mass of the Twenty–second Sunday in Ordinary Time teach us to live by the spirit of the Law.
In the first reading, we hear Moses exhort the people to appreciate the letter of the Law. Moses rightly tells the people that Israel is a great nation because they have the Law. Though they don’t even have their own land yet, Israel is greater, says Moses, than even Egypt. Why? Because the Egyptians don’t have what Israel has: direct communication with God and explicit instruction in how to live according to Wisdom.
Now by this time, Egypt had developed a highly sophisticated civilization. Their advancement of mathematics and letters are just two examples of their many accomplishments. But try as they might, they didn’t get very far in their development of religion. Even up to the time of Moses, for example, Egyptian worship was often centered around animals.
The Greeks would later develop a much more sophisticated system of worship. Their gods would at least be rational beings (in the form of man). Plato and Aristotle would later make great advancements in the understanding of who God is, but even they could never came close to what is revealed to Israel. While Aristotle was reasoning from effect to cause in order to understand the First Cause, Israel was in direct communication with the First Cause Himself.
Saint James alludes to this truth in the Epistle when he says: “Every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” But James immediately turns to the practical consequences of revelation. God gave us this gift, says Saint James, “so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.”
Upon receiving the Word, we are to act upon it. “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers,” says Saint James. If, after hearing the word, we are not acting well, we are deceiving ourselves in thinking we are Christians. Saint James even goes on to give us a litmus test to know if we are delusionary. He says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
Notice what orphans and widows have in common: they cannot usually offer much in return for help given to them. In fact, we often earn negative social–status points when we are seen with orphans or beggars or widows. Saint James is obviously exhorting us to act in pure love. He could have even gone a step further and added that we help them in secret. “When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” says our Lord. (Mt. 6:3)
In any case, we do get to hear Jesus speak on this same subject in the Gospel today. In his discourse, Jesus gives the foundation for the teaching of Saint Paul who says: “the letter kills but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Cor. 3:6)
What prompts Jesus to teach on this subject is the complaining Pharisees. Here we have the Messiah who loves his flock so much that he is out among them, walking with them, talking with them, mixing his spit with dirt to heal them, sleeping among them on the ground in the rain. And the Pharisees have the nerve to complain that Jesus and his disciples are not keeping the purity laws of clean hands and clean utensils. As ridiculous as this may sound to us, these Pharisees are deadly serious.
Notice how sweet and patient Jesus always seems to be—to everyone except the Pharisees. Why? Because it’s these idiots, with their twisting of the Word of God to their own will, who are leading the common folk astray. Here, Jesus calls them hypocrites and tells them that they have abandoned the commandment of God in order to hold their own tradition.
Jesus then takes his point a step further and proceeds to set aside huge portions of the Mosaic Law. He turns his back to the Pharisees in order to face the common folk and exhorts them to realize that the laws such as not eating pork and the like were laid down to lead them to the true meaning of purity. To these common folk who are ready to listen, Jesus says that the only thing that can truly become defiled is the heart. This is the focus of religion: to purify the heart.
Then Jesus proceeds to list a series of sins and habits that defile the heart.
What’s the Message?
There is an obvious message found in today’s readings: don’t live a delusionary Christian life. Don’t live by the letter (or customs) of religion while ignoring or even disdaining your neighbor.
But how smug we are in thinking that this message doesn’t really apply to us. How ironic that we think that we ourselves are not like those hypocritical Pharisees.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves this question: When was the last time we helped the homeless or the fatherless or the widowed? When was the last time we actually got our hands dirty, the way Christ got his hands dirty? When was the last time we actually hugged a dirty beggar or changed the bed–pan of a poor old lady?
If we can’t recall doing any of these things in a long while, Saint James would ask us to question whether or not we are practicing true religion. Maybe even Christ would gently encourage us to reflect on the passage from Isaiah as well.
What’s the Response?
A good and violent response we can make to today’s readings is to pick up the phone and volunteer to serve soup at the local soup kitchen. While there, we can think: how can I really get my hands dirty? On our way home, we can make a house call to an unfortunate old lady in our neighborhood, perhaps bringing her flowers and encouraging her to call whenever she needs a ride to Mass.
Whatever the case may be, the response to today’s readings ought to be a practical one. We ought to take it for granted that we are a lot more like the fake Pharisees than we care to admit. We ought to do at least one act that would do violence to this sort of disposition. We ought to be, as Saint James says, “doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”
With the Psalmist in today’s Mass, we ought to pray:
One who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.
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Contribution by Brother Anthony Myers
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