9 February 2025 V Sunday Ordinary Time Year C

God bless us and may the Virgin protect us! 

I add at the end of the commentary on the Readings some notes that help to better enter into the text and are also useful for lectio divina or catechesis. 

*First Reading From the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (6, 1- 8)

 In the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C (this year replaced by the liturgy of the Presentation of the Lord) we read the account of Jeremiah's vocation, today instead that of Isaiah: both great prophets and yet both confess their littleness. Jeremiah proclaims that he is unable to speak, but since it is God who has chosen him, it is God himself who will give him the necessary strength. Isaiah, for his part, is seized by a sense of unworthiness but it is always God who makes him 'pure'. The prophets' vocation is always a personal choice on God's part that demands complete adherence, the result of decisive awareness: "To send and to go" are the terms of every vocation and Isaiah too responds in full. If Jeremiah is a priest but it is not known where he received the divine call, Isaiah, on the other hand, who was not a priest, places his vocation in the temple of Jerusalem: "In the year that King Ozias died, I saw the Lord sitting on a high and lofty throne". When Isaiah says: I saw, he is communicating a vision to us, and since the prophetic books are studded with visions, we must be able to decode this language. Isaiah gives us a valuable clue and states that all this happened in the year of the death of King Ozias who reigned in Jerusalem from 781 to 740 B.C. When King Solomon died (in 933 B.C., almost two centuries earlier), the kingdom of David and Solomon was divided: there were two kingdoms with two kings and two capitals. In the South, Oziah reigned over Jerusalem; in the North, Menaem reigned over Samaria. Ozias was leprous and died of this disease in Jerusalem in 740 B.C. It was therefore in that year that Isaiah received his prophetic calling. Subsequently, he preached for about forty years and died a martyr's death under King Manasseh of Judah, according to an accredited tradition, sawn in two with a wooden saw. He remains in Israel's collective memory as a great prophet, particularly as the prophet of God's holiness. 'Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of his glory': the Sanctus of our Eucharistic celebrations thus goes back to the prophet Isaiah, although perhaps this acclamation was already part of the temple liturgy in Jerusalem. God is 'Holy': in the biblical sense this means that He is totally Other than man (Qadosh), that is, He is not in the image of man, but as the Bible states, it is man who is created in the image of God. In Isaiah's vision God is seated on a lofty throne, smoke spreads and fills all space, a voice thunders so loudly that the places tremble: "All the earth is full of your glory". The prophet thinks of what happened to Moses on Mount Sinai, when God made a covenant with his people and gave them the Tablets of the Law. The book of Exodus recounts: "Mount Sinai was all smoking, because the Lord had descended there in fire; the smoke rose like that of a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled greatly..." (Ex 19:18-19). Isaiah, in his littleness, feels a reverential awe: "Oh alas! I am lost, for a man of unclean lips am I... yet mine eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts'.  Isaiah's fear is above all an awareness of our smallness and the unbridgeable gap that separates us from God. God, however, does not stop and says: "Do not fear". In Isaiah's vision, the word is replaced by gesture: 'One of the seraphim flew towards me, he held a burning coal in his hand... he touched my mouth'. It purifies him because the prophet is purified by the Word that enables him to enter into a relationship with God. Calling God "The Holy One of Israel" also affirms that He is the Totally Other and at the same time close to His people, so that His people can feel Him as their God.  Throughout the Bible God appears as the one who wants to become the 'Holy One' for the whole of humanity, the God who loves us and wants to remain with us all. 

Three additional notes: 

1.The book of Isaiah comprises sixty-six chapters: however, it is not by a single author because it is a collection of three collections. Chapters 1 to 39 are largely the work of the prophet who here recounts his vocation (within these 39 chapters, some pages are probably later); chapters 40 to 55 are the work of a prophet who preached during his exile in Babylon (in the 6th century BC); chapters 56 to 66 record the preaching of a third prophet, a contemporary of those who had returned from exile in Babylon.

2.Holiness is not a moral concept, nor an attribute of God, but is the very nature of God; in fact, the adjective divine does not exist in Hebrew and is replaced by the term holy, which means Totally Other than man: we cannot reach him by our own strength because he infinitely exceeds us, to the point that we have no power over him. The prophet Hosea writes: "I am God and not man; in your midst I am the holy God" (Hos 11:9). Therefore in the Bible no human being is ever considered holy, at most one can be 'sanctified' by God and thus reflect his image, which has always been our calling. 

3.In some language translations, the expression 'The Lord of hosts' is rendered as 'the Lord of the universe', probably to appeal to a sensibility that resents the idea of a God of hosts and at the same time to express a universalistic sense of God's action. 

*Responsorial Psalm (137 /138,1-5.7c-8)

This psalm conveys a feeling of deep joy and from the very first verse everything is said. The expression 'give thanks' is in fact repeated several times: 'I give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart... I give thanks to your name'. The believer is the one who lives in God's grace and simply acknowledges it, with a heart full of gratitude. Here the believer is the people of Israel who, as always in the psalms, speak and give thanks for the covenant God has offered them. This is understood from the repetition of the name 'Lord', which returns several times in these verses. "Lord" is the Name of God, the so-called "tetragrammaton", consisting of four consonants (YHWH), revealed to Moses at Sinai in the episode of the burning bush (Ex. 3). The four Hebrew letters are: yod, he, vav, he and the exact pronunciation has been lost over time, as the original vowels are not indicated in the Hebrew text. We generally say 'Yahweh', a sacred name that is rarely pronounced out of respect. It is almost always replaced by Adonai ("Lord") or HaShem ("The Name") during the reading. God revealed himself to Moses during the Exodus on Sinai, also under the name 'Love and Loyalty', and we hear it here too: 'I give thanks to your name for your love and faithfulness'. This same expression "Love and Faithfulness" recurs several times in other psalms and throughout the Bible, a precious discovery of Israel, thanks to the Spirit of God: "I am the Lord, the merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness" (Ex 34:6). It is no coincidence that the revelation of God's tenderness occurs after the episode of the golden calf, i.e. at a time of severe infidelity of the people because it was in their repeated infidelities that Israel experienced God's mercy. God's faithfulness sung unceasingly in the temple of Jerusalem: "I prostrate myself towards your holy temple" (v.2) and the psalm continues: "I give thanks to your name for your love and your faithfulness". As it appears in the life of the prophet Isaiah, the gap that separates us from God, unbridgeable by meritorious deeds, is bridged by God himself by inviting us into his intimacy. And in this psalm we discover what God's holiness consists of: Love and faithfulness. At the end of the psalm we read "your love" is forever and "your right hand saves me", a further reference to the Exodus where it is said that He has delivered us "with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm" (Deut 4:34). Israel knows that it is the recipient of Revelation, the confidant of God, but it also realises that it must become His prophet by proclaiming His Love and Faithfulness to all mankind. This is the meaning of the verse: 'All the kings of the earth shall give thanks to thee, O Lord, ... when they hear the words of thy mouth' (v.4). Only when Israel has fulfilled its mission as a witness of God, then can one truly sing: 'I thank thee, O Lord, with all my heart' and... 'All the kings of the earth will thank thee, O Lord'. The psalm ends with a prayer: 'Do not forsake the work of your hands', which means: Continue despite our infidelities. The two phrases should be read together: 'Lord, your love is forever ... do not forsake the work of your hands. His everlasting love gives us assurance that he will never forsake the work of his hands, and for this we do not cease to give thanks: "The Lord will do all things for me" (v.8).

Additional note. The Italian translation bears: "All the kings of the earth will give thanks to you, Lord" (v.4). Exegetes point out that here we are dealing with an unaccomplished or imperfect Hebrew verb that can indicate either future actions, habitual and repeated actions or continuous or incomplete actions in the past or present. Thus it could be validly translated with the present tense: 'May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you' or with a subjunctive: 'May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you' and it is obvious that in each choice the meaning changes somewhat.*Second Reading From the Epistle of St Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (15:1-11)

If today we reread what St Paul writes, it is because over these millennia, from generation to generation, the gospel has been passed on as in an uninterrupted relay race where, along the way, the 'witness' is handed on to the next person who in turn will hand it on to the next.  The Church is called upon to faithfully transmit the gospel. Paul, apart from the apparition on the road to Damascus, did not know and witness the life of Jesus of Nazareth; his sources are the Apostles of the first generation and for him, in particular, Ananias, Barnabas and the Christian community of Antioch of Syria. Thanks to them, he received the Gospel, which he transmits by summarising it in two sentences: Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day, which can be summarised in just two words: died/resurrected, which constitute the two pillars of the Christian faith, and this is in accordance with the Scriptures, i.e. also with the Old Testament where, however, no explicit statements on the death and resurrection of the Messiah are found. The formula 'according to the Scriptures' does not therefore mean that everything was written in advance, but that everything that happened is in conformity with God's merciful plan. One could then replace the expression 'according to the Scriptures' with 'according to God's plan and promise'. Christ by dying on the cross wiped out our sins and, according to his own promise, rose again: death was conquered and it is easy to see that the entire Old Testament is filled with promises of forgiveness of sins, salvation and life. For example, in the Old Testament, the expression 'on the third day' evoked a promise of salvation and deliverance because to say that there will be a third day was equivalent to saying: 'God will intervene'. On the third day on Mount Moria, God rescued Isaac from death (Gen 22:8); On the third day, Joseph in Egypt restored freedom to his brothers (Gen 42:18); On the third day, the Lord appeared to his people gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai (Ex 19:11- 16); On the third day, Jonah, finally converted, returned to the land and to his mission (Gen 2:1). This is how the word of Hosea was interpreted: "He will restore us to life after two days; on the third day he will raise us up and we will live before him" (Hos 6:2). The third day is therefore not a chronological datum, but the expression of a hope: that of the triumph of life over death. To proclaim that Christ is risen on the third day according to the Scriptures is therefore to affirm that salvation is universal: the triumph of life and salvation are for all times and for all men, since Christ lives forever. Grafted into him we are already part of the new humanity made alive by the Holy Spirit. Paul recounts that he personally experienced this salvation by being a persecutor forgiven, converted and transformed into a pillar of the Church, and he will never forget this by testifying to the wonder of God's love for humanity: a love that is unconditional and continually offered. Paul, like Isaiah, like Peter, is deeply aware of his own sin; but he allows God's grace to work in him: 'By God's grace, however, I am what I am, and his grace in me has not been in vain. Indeed I have laboured more than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God which is me' (v.10). From a persecutor God made him an apostle, the most ardent, as from a timid youth, he made Jeremiah a courageous prophet and Isaiah, from a man with unclean lips, made him the 'mouth of God' and Peter, from a renegade, made him the foundation of his Church. The gospel to be shouted from the rooftops of humanity is precisely God's Love and Mercy for all.

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*From the Gospel according to Luke (5:1-11)

 The first reading almost always recalls the gospel, and we perceive it very well today. We are not used to comparing the apostle Peter to the prophet Isaiah, yet the liturgy texts help us to do so by offering us the stories of their vocation. The scenarios are different: for Isaiah, everything takes place during a vision in the temple in Jerusalem; for Peter, on Lake Tiberias. Both, however, suddenly find themselves in the presence of God: Isaiah in his vision, Peter witnessing a miracle after a night out. The details provided by Luke leave no doubt. Peter says to Jesus: "Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing" and Jesus invites them to cast their nets again.  Then something extraordinary happens against all expectations and human experience. If, in fact, nothing was caught during the night, it is certainly even worse during the day, and all the fishermen who work at night know this. The miracle, however, takes place because at the simple word of Jesus, Peter, an experienced fisherman shows humble and boundless trust and obeys. the result was such an enormous quantity of fish that he risked breaking his nets. Both Peter and Isaiah react in the same way to God's irruption in their lives; both perceive his holiness and the gulf that separates them from him. Their expressions are similar: 'Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinner', exclaims Peter, while Isaiah says: 'Alas! I am lost, for a man of unclean lips I am'.  The teaching is clear: our sins, our unworthiness, do not stop God because he is content for us to become aware of them and present ourselves to him in truth. Only when we acknowledge our poverty, however, can God fill us with his grace. Peter and Isaiah are seized by a reverential fear before his presence: Isaiah sees a burning coal touching his mouth, Peter hears Jesus' words: 'Do not fear', and in the end both are called to the service of the same project of God, the salvation of mankind. Isaiah as prophet, Peter will become fisherman of men for their salvation. To the words of Jesus: "Fear not, thou shalt henceforth be a fisher of men" Peter does not respond directly, but together with the others performs a gesture of impressive simplicity: "And having pulled the boats ashore, they left everything and followed him". The disciples become Christ's co-operators even if the enterprise seems doomed to failure according to human judgement and they must always continue to cast their nets. This is the mystery of our collaboration in God's work: we can do nothing without him, and God does not want to do anything without us. As Paul says in the second reading, it is his grace that does everything: 'By God's grace I am what I am, and his grace in me was not in vain'. On closer inspection, the only cooperation that is asked of us is a trusting willingness as Peter does who courageously risks a new fishing attempt. And after the miracle he no longer calls Jesus Master, but Lord, the name reserved for God: he prostrates himself at his feet ready now to do whatever he says. Ultimately, it is thanks to the yes of Isaiah, of Peter and his companions, and of Paul, that we too are here today. The word of Jesus still resounds for us: "Put out into the deep and cast your nets for fishing" and it is our turn to respond: on your word we will cast our nets. For a miraculous catch, the secret is always to trust Christ, which is not easy but possible for everyone.

Additional note. In verse 6, the verb 'they caught a quantity of fish' is συνεκλεισαν (synekleisan), derived from the verb συγκλείω (synkleió), which means 'to enclose', 'to trap' or 'to enclose together' and means to catch the fish with the net by pulling them out of the sea in order to kill them. In his works, St Augustine often uses the image of fishermen to describe the work of the Apostles, especially Peter and Andrew, called by Jesus to become "fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19). Thus he notes in his Commentary on the Psalms (Psalm 91, Discourse 2): "They fish men, not to kill them but to vivify them; they fish, but to lead them to the light of truth, not to death. So when it comes to men, snatching them from the sea (symbol of evil) means saving them: taking men alive means preventing them from drowning, that is, saving them from the whirlpools of death: bringing them to breath, to Light, to Life.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

*Synthesis 9 February 2025 V Sunday Ordinary Time Year C

God bless us and may the Virgin protect us! 

I add at the end of the commentary on the Readings some notes that help to better enter into the text and are also useful for lectio divina or catechesis. 

*First Reading From the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (6, 1- 8)

 In the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C (this year replaced by the liturgy of the Presentation of the Lord) we read the account of Jeremiah's vocation, today instead that of Isaiah: both great prophets and yet both confess their littleness. Jeremiah proclaims that he is unable to speak, but since it is God who has chosen him, it is God himself who will give him the necessary strength. Isaiah, for his part, is seized by a sense of unworthiness but it is always God who makes him 'pure'. The prophets' vocation is always a personal choice on God's part that demands complete adherence, the result of decisive awareness: "To send and to go" are the terms of every vocation and Isaiah too responds in full. If Jeremiah is a priest but it is not known where he received the divine call, Isaiah, on the other hand, who was not a priest, places his vocation in the temple of Jerusalem: "In the year that King Ozias died, I saw the Lord sitting on a high and lofty throne". Isaiah gives us a valuable indication and states that this happened in the year of the death of King Ozias, who reigned in Jerusalem from 781 to 740 B.C. When King Solomon died (in 933 B.C., almost two centuries earlier), the kingdom of David and Solomon was divided: there were two kingdoms with two kings and two capitals. In the South, Oziah reigned over Jerusalem; in the North, Menaem reigned over Samaria. Ozias was leprous and died of this disease in Jerusalem in 740 B.C. It was therefore in that year that Isaiah received his prophetic calling. Subsequently, he preached for about forty years and died a martyr's death under King Manasseh of Judah, according to an accredited tradition, sawn in two with a wooden saw. He remains in Israel's collective memory as a great prophet, particularly as the prophet of God's holiness. 'Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of his glory': the Sanctus of our Eucharistic celebrations thus goes back to the prophet Isaiah, although perhaps this acclamation was already part of the temple liturgy in Jerusalem. God is 'Holy': in the biblical sense this means that He is totally Other than man (Qadosh), that is, He is not in the image of man, but as the Bible states, it is man who is created in the image of God. Calling God "The Holy One of Israel" also affirms that He is the Totally Other and at the same time close to His people, so that His people can feel Him as their God.  Throughout the Bible God appears as the one who wants to become the 'Holy One' for the whole of humanity, the God who loves us and wants to remain with us all. 

Three additional notes: 

1.The book of Isaiah comprises sixty-six chapters: however, it is not by a single author because it is a collection of three collections. Chapters 1 to 39 are largely the work of the prophet who here recounts his vocation (within these 39 chapters, some pages are probably later); chapters 40 to 55 are the work of a prophet who preached during his exile in Babylon (in the 6th century BC); chapters 56 to 66 record the preaching of a third prophet, a contemporary of those who had returned from exile in Babylon.

2.Holiness is not a moral concept, nor an attribute of God, but is the very nature of God; in fact, the adjective divine does not exist in Hebrew and is replaced by the term holy, which means Totally Other than man: we cannot reach him by our own strength because he infinitely exceeds us, to the point that we have no power over him. The prophet Hosea writes: "I am God and not man; in your midst I am the holy God" (Hos 11:9). Therefore in the Bible no human being is ever considered holy, at most one can be 'sanctified' by God and thus reflect his image, which has always been our calling. 

3.In some language translations, the expression 'The Lord of hosts' is rendered as 'the Lord of the universe', probably to appeal to a sensibility that resents the idea of a God of hosts and at the same time to express a universalistic sense of God's action. 

*Responsorial Psalm (137 /138,1-5.7c-8)

This psalm conveys a feeling of deep joy and from the very first verse everything is said. The expression 'give thanks' is in fact repeated several times: 'I give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart... I give thanks to your name'. The believer is the one who lives in God's grace and simply acknowledges it, with a heart full of gratitude. Here the believer is the people of Israel who, as always in the psalms, speak and give thanks for the covenant God has offered them. This is understood from the repetition of the name "Lord", which returns several times in these verses. "Lord" is the Name of God, the so-called "tetragrammaton", consisting of four consonants (YHWH), revealed to Moses at Sinai in the episode of the burning bush (Ex. 3). We generally say 'Yahweh', a sacred name that is rarely pronounced out of respect. God revealed himself to Moses during the Exodus at Sinai, also under the name 'Love and Loyalty' and we hear it here too: 'I give thanks to your name for your love and faithfulness'. This same expression "Love and Faithfulness" recurs several times in other psalms and throughout the Bible: "I am the Lord, the merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness" (Ex 34:6). In this psalm, we discover that God's holiness consists in Love and faithfulness. Israel realises that it must become His prophet by proclaiming His Love and Faithfulness to all mankind. It is only when Israel has fulfilled this mission that one can truly sing: 'I thank Thee, Lord, with all my heart' and... 'All the kings of the earth will thank Thee, Lord'. 

Additional note. The Italian translation reads: "They will give thanks to you, Lord, all the kings of the earth" (v.4). Exegetes point out that here we are dealing with an unaccomplished or imperfect Hebrew verb that can indicate either future actions, habitual and repeated actions, or continuous or incomplete actions in the past or present. Thus it could be validly translated with the present tense: 'May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you' or with a subjunctive: 'May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you' and it is obvious that in each choice the meaning changes somewhat.

*Second Reading From the Epistle of St Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (15:1-11)

Paul, apart from the apparition on the road to Damascus, did not know or witness the life of Jesus of Nazareth; his sources are the Apostles of the first generation and thanks to them, he received the Gospel, which he in turn transmits by summarising it in two sentences: Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day, which can be summarised in just two words: died/rose which constitute the two pillars of the Christian faith and this is in accordance with the Scriptures, i.e. also the Old Testament where, however, no explicit statements on the death and resurrection of the Messiah are found. The formula 'according to the Scriptures' does not therefore mean that everything was written in advance, but that everything that happened is in conformity with God's merciful plan. One could then replace the expression 'according to the Scriptures' with 'according to God's plan and promise'. Christ by dying on the cross wiped out our sins and, according to his own promise, rose again: death was conquered and it is easy to see that the entire Old Testament is filled with promises of forgiveness of sins, salvation and life. For example, in the Old Testament, the expression 'on the third day' evoked a promise of salvation and deliverance because to say that there will be a third day was equivalent to saying: 'God will intervene'. On the third day on Mount Moria, God rescued Isaac from death (Gen 22:8); On the third day, Joseph in Egypt restored freedom to his brothers (Gen 42:18); On the third day, the Lord appeared to his people gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai (Ex 19:11- 16); On the third day, Jonah, finally converted, returned to the land and to his mission (Gen 2:1). This is how the word of Hosea was interpreted: "He will restore us to life after two days; on the third day he will raise us up and we will live before him" (Hos 6:2). The third day is therefore not a chronological datum, but the expression of a hope: that of the triumph of life over death. To proclaim that Christ is risen on the third day according to the Scriptures is therefore to affirm that salvation is for all times and for all men, since Christ lives forever. As a persecutor, God made St Paul an apostle, as a timid youth, he made Jeremiah a courageous prophet, and Isaiah, as a man with unclean lips, made him the 'mouth of God', and Peter, as a renegade, made him the foundation of his Church. 

*From the Gospel according to Luke (5, 1-11)

 The first reading almost always recalls the gospel, and we perceive this very well today. We are not used to comparing the apostle Peter to the prophet Isaiah, yet the texts of the liturgy help us to do so by offering us the stories of their vocation. The scenarios are different: for Isaiah, everything takes place during a vision in the temple in Jerusalem; for Peter, on Lake Tiberias. Both, however, suddenly find themselves in the presence of God: Isaiah in his vision, Peter witnessing a miracle after a night out. The details provided by Luke leave no doubt. Peter says to Jesus: 'Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing' and Jesus invites them to cast their nets again.  Then something extraordinary happens against all expectations and human experience. If, in fact, nothing was caught during the night, it is certainly even worse during the day, and all the fishermen who work at night know this. The miracle, however, takes place because, at the simple word of Jesus, Peter, an experienced fisherman shows humble and boundless trust and obeys. the result was such an enormous quantity of fish that he risked breaking his nets. Both Peter and Isaiah react in the same way to the irruption of God in their lives; both perceive his holiness and the gulf that separates them from him. Their expressions are similar: 'Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinner', exclaims Peter, while Isaiah says: 'Alas! I am lost, for a man of unclean lips I am'.  The teaching is clear: our sins, our unworthiness do not stop God because he is content for us to become aware of them and present ourselves to him in truth, and when we recognise our poverty, God can fill us with his grace. To the words of Jesus: "Fear not, thou shalt now be a fisher of men" Peter does not respond directly, but together with the others he performs a gesture of impressive simplicity: "And having pulled the boats ashore, they left everything and followed him". The disciples become Christ's co-operators even if the enterprise seems doomed to failure according to human judgement and they must always continue to cast their nets. It is the mystery of our collaboration in God's work: we can do nothing without him, and God does not want to do anything without us. The word of Jesus still resounds for us: 'Put out into the deep and cast your nets for fishing' and it is up to us to respond: at your word we will cast our nets. 

Supplementary note. In verse 6, the verb "they caught a quantity of fish" is derived from the Greek verb synkleió, which means "to enclose", "to trap" or "to enclose together" and means to catch fish with a net by snatching them out of the sea in order to kill them. St Augustine often uses the image of fishermen to describe the work of the Apostles, particularly Peter and Andrew, who were called by Jesus to become "fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19). In his Commentary on the Psalms (Psalm 91, Sermon 2) he writes: "They fish men, not to kill them but to make them alive; they fish, but to lead them to the light of truth, not to death. So when it comes to men, snatching them from the sea (symbol of evil) means saving them: taking men alive means preventing them from drowning, that is, saving them from the whirlpools of death: bringing them to breath, to Light, to Life.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

Purity, impudity and misrepresented holiness

(Mk 7,14-23)

The Lord is for a comprehensive humanization. But in ancient cultures the mythical vision of the world led people to appreciate any reality starting from the category of ‘holiness’ as ‘detachment’.

The purity laws indicated the conditions necessary to stand before God and feel good in His presence - but in fact always dismayed, because [obviously] not totally complying.

At Mk’s time some converted Jews believed they could abandon the ancient customs and get closer to the pagans; others were of the opposite opinion: it would have been like rejecting substantial parts of the Torah.

In fact, the evangelist emphasizes that the problem is «in the Home» (v.17) that is, in the Church. Fraternity where the Master who came to free us from artificial obsessions, wasn’t yet understood.

Christ must insist on his teaching, now not addressed to strangers but to disciples [precisely] incapable of «understanding» (vv.14.18).

In this way, the Gospel rejects the distinction between the religious sphere of life and "contaminated" daily arrangement; a source of corruption. But normal, ground, harsh reality - therefore assessed distant from the ‘divine’.

Quintessence that vice versa does not intend to subjugate anyone.

The active presence of a new Order abolishes legal prescriptions and shifts the center of morality of our acts.

Here the teaching of Jesus is recalled: impurity does not come from outside [that is, from external to the inside]. That’s not the threat.

The realities of the world are never wicked and unsuitable - not even by the worship.

They become an abomination only by passing through decisions that are sacrilegious, because block life. And detachments that barbarize.

There is no sacred and profane in itself.

Mystery and Beatitude come into the world exclusively through the channel of dialogue and encounter with respect for intelligence, personal soul, and differing cultures. Not by pursuing entities of merit, nor misrepresented bottlenecks.

Here formal legalism kills the expansion of life and ideals: “impure” is what poisons the existence and spontaneous realization of people, their relationships, and creation itself.

Jesus frees the crowd of the voiceless and lost from the obsession of torments and fears, from always being on the defensive.

We are called to love the limits: they are the ground of preparatory energies of the real flowering -  impulses and signs of our ‘task in the world’ according to the Newness of God.

Every Exodus values alternatives.

And we find the realization, the meaning of life, and gradually greater completeness, indeed by meeting our opposite sides.

We are not called to stare in one direction. There are others.

Anyone who intimidates the "inadequate" woman and brother threatens the life of the cosmos and makes the most sensitive and attentive people self-doubtful.

It is the imperfections that make us new, exceptional, unique!

Let’s therefore learn not to feel dismay at the fact that ‘we are not’ religiously "successful" - but Firstfruits!

[Wednesday 5th wk. in O.T.  February 12, 2025]

Purity, impurity and holiness misrepresented

(Mk 7:14-23)

The Church has retained faith in the goodness of creation; it does not view nature, society, and the Father's concrete work in a negative light, as is unfortunately advocated in certain squeamish mentalities (in a devout key).

Neither does he believe that to feel saved, there are instruments or zones of refuge that one only needs to use, enjoy, or reach out to. The Lord is for an all-round humanisation.

In ancient cultures, the religious and mythical view of the world led people to appreciate any reality from the category of holiness as detachment and separateness - even inaccessibility.

Purity laws indicated the conditions necessary to stand before God and feel good in his presence - but in fact always dismayed, because (obviously) not totally fulfilled.

One could not present oneself where the person was, or on any occasion and in any way - but according to rules related to food, contact, dress, recommended times of prayer; and so on.

In the context of Achaemenid rule, in order to enhance identity, rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and maintain their class, the priests accentuated purity norms and sacrificial obligations, repeatedly manipulating the meaning, contexts, and postulates of Scripture.

Obviously, a substantial part of the offerings thus inflated remained with the class that performed the rites.

All this, at the expense of a flattened conception of the propitiatory and (supposedly) thaumaturgical cultic style, which invested every aspect of people's ordinary lives.

A multitude enslaved by the imposed vision - childish in itself - algid perhaps, but swampy and irritating.

At the time of Mk some Jewish converts believed they could abandon the ancient customs and approach the pagans; others were of the opposite opinion: it would be like rejecting substantial parts of the Torah [e.g. Lev 11-16 and 17ff].

In fact Mk emphasises that the problem is "in the house" (v.17 Greek text: inside the house) i.e. in the Church and among its intimates [the CEI translation reads in "a" house].

A place where paradoxically we still do not understand the Master [!] who came to free us from invented and contrived obsessions.

Christ must insist in his teaching, now not addressed to strangers, but precisely to the habitués, incapable - unlike the crowds - of "understanding" (v.14) even the rudiments of spiritual things.

In order to educate the stubborn ones still "devoid of intellect" (v.18) who consider themselves masters, he does not go to just any dwelling place, but precisely to the place where, unfortunately, expectations are cultivated that are sometimes far removed from the people (vv.14.17).

The evangelist rejects the distinction between the religious sphere of life and a 'contaminated' daily set-up; a source of corruption. But normal, trivial, summary - for this reason assessed as distant from the 'divine'.

Quintessence that conversely does not intend to subjugate anyone.

Prescriptions remain insufficient to give us access to God: they are but symbols, trajectories, and images.

The active presence of a new Order abolishes legal prescriptions, and shifts the centre of the morality of our acts.

Here we recall Jesus' teaching: impurity does not come from without [i.e. from outside to inside].

It is not the threat to the life of the woman, the man, and the community, according to God's trickless design.

The realities of the world are never wicked and unfit - not even for worship.

They only become obnoxious by passing through decisions that are sacrilegious, because they block life. And detachments that barbarianise.

The canonicity of the bigot and the cassock has nothing to do with divinisation, which conversely rhymes with what is concretely humanising.

The debate on the pure and the impure should not be placed on the level of things [e.g. food that goes to the stomach] but of behaviour, which starts and goes to the heart. A place that is not always serene and well 'ordered'.

There are no sacred apriorisms: it is not enough that a place, a house, objects, a person, etc. have been legitimised by ceremonies. have been legitimised by ceremonies or even exchanges, for them to become untouchable, honest and eminent.

In this way, there is no sacred and profane in itself.

Mystery and bliss come into the world exclusively through the channel of dialogue and encounter with respect for intelligence, personal souls, and differing cultures. Not through entities of merit, nor through misrepresented straits.

Sanctification is linked to conduct. And in cases of consistency, even to the failure, anguish, and frustrations that result from demanding field choices.

These are decisions that jeopardise, and sometimes ridicule us in comparison with, the custom of compulsory authentication - where it sometimes seems necessary to avoid life. Or you are 'nobody'.

Here, formal legalism unfortunately kills any expansion of resources and ideals. 

In short, impure is that which poisons the spontaneous existence and realisation of people, their relationships, and creation itself.

Yet it is imperfections that make us new, exceptional, unique!

Jesus opens up a new Way to bring all of us imperfect people closer to God, to others even far away, and to ourselves - without puritanical exclusions.

When, for example, we do not accept ourselves as we are - inside, or in the field, not welcoming the different and the opposite - because in common opinion 'it is not right', we risk transforming dissatisfaction into an atmosphere of intimate nagging.

Even the religious sense of impurity will lead us from unrest to disaster.

But outside the commitment to friendship with ourselves, with created things, and the spirit of fraternity, of conviviality of contraries, the fear of contamination is unfounded.

On the contrary, we are called to love limits: they are the ground, even broken and impudent, of preparatory energies for real flowering.

They are primordial impulses and signs of our task in the world according to God's newness.

Every Exodus values alternatives.

And we find fulfilment, the meaning of life, as well as gradually greater completeness, by encountering precisely our opposite sides.

Anyone who intimidates the 'inadequate' brother threatens the life of the cosmos and makes the very people who are most sensitive and attentive distrustful.

Jesus frees the crowd of the voiceless, the lost, from the obsession of apprehensions and fears, from always being on the defensive.

We are not called to fixate on one direction. There are others.

Let us therefore learn not to feel dismay that we are not religiously 'successful' - but Firstfruits!

To internalise and live the message:

What do you think makes you presentable in society? In what sense are you impeccable - because you are embellished and conform to opinion?

Does being a 'child' and 'firstfruit' make you defensive or does it restore your desire to live to the full?

The Evangelist Mark reports the following words of Jesus, which are inserted within the debate at that time regarding what is pure and impure: “There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him … What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts” (Mk 7, 14-15, 20-21). Beyond the immediate question concerning food, we can detect in the reaction of the Pharisees a permanent temptation within man: to situate the origin of evil in an exterior cause. Many modern ideologies deep down have this presupposition: since injustice comes “from outside,” in order for justice to reign, it is sufficient to remove the exterior causes that prevent it being achieved. This way of thinking – Jesus warns – is ingenuous and shortsighted. Injustice, the fruit of evil, does not have exclusively external roots; its origin lies in the human heart, where the seeds are found of a mysterious cooperation with evil. With bitterness the Psalmist recognises this: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51,7). Indeed, man is weakened by an intense influence, which wounds his capacity to enter into communion with the other. By nature, he is open to sharing freely, but he finds in his being a strange force of gravity that makes him turn in and affirm himself above and against others: this is egoism, the result of original sin. Adam and Eve, seduced by Satan’s lie, snatching the mysterious fruit against the divine command, replaced the logic of trusting in Love with that of suspicion and competition; the logic of receiving and trustfully expecting from the Other with anxiously seizing and doing on one’s own (cf. Gn 3, 1-6), experiencing, as a consequence, a sense of disquiet and uncertainty. How can man free himself from this selfish influence and open himself to love?

[Pope Benedict, Message for Lent 2010]

Old Testament Tradition and the New Meaning of Purity

1. An indispensable complement to the words pronounced by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount on which we have centred the cycle of our present reflections must be the analysis of purity. When Christ, in explaining the proper meaning of the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery", made reference to the inner man, he specified at the same time the fundamental dimension of purity, with which the mutual relations between man and woman in and out of marriage are to be marked. The words: 'But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart' (Mt 5:27-28) express what is contrary to purity. At the same time, these words demand the purity that in the Sermon on the Mount is included in the statement of the beatitudes: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8). In this way Christ addresses an appeal to the human heart: he invites it, not accuses it, as we have already made clear above.

2. Christ sees in the heart, in man's innermost being, the source of purity - but also of moral impurity - in the fundamental and most generic meaning of the word. This is confirmed, for example, by his reply to the Pharisees, scandalised by the fact that his disciples "transgress the tradition of the ancients, for they do not wash their hands when they take food" (Mt 15:2). Jesus then said to those present: "Not what goes into the mouth makes a man unclean, but what comes out of the mouth makes a man unclean" (Mt 15:11). To his disciples, however, answering Peter's question, he explained these words thus: "...what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. This makes a man unclean. For from the heart come evil intentions, murders, adulteries, prostitutions, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things that make a man unclean, but eating without washing one's hands does not make a man unclean" (cf. Mt 15:18-20; cf. Mk 7:20-23).

When we say "purity", "pure", in the first meaning of these terms, we indicate that which contrasts with uncleanness. 'Soiling' means 'make unclean', 'pollute'. This refers to the different spheres of the physical world. We speak, for example, of a 'dirty street', a 'dirty room', we also speak of 'polluted air'. Likewise, man can also be 'unclean' when his body is not clean. To remove the filthiness of the body, it must be washed. In the Old Testament tradition, great importance was attached to ritual ablutions, e.g. washing one's hands before eating, which is mentioned in the quoted text. Numerous and detailed prescriptions concerned the ablutions of the body in relation to sexual impurity, understood in an exclusively physiological sense, which we mentioned earlier (cf. Lev 15 ). According to the state of medical science at the time, the various ablutions could correspond to hygienic prescriptions. Insofar as they were imposed in the name of God and contained in the Sacred Books of the Old Covenant legislation, the observance of them acquired, indirectly, a religious significance; they were ritual ablutions and, in the life of the man of the Old Covenant, they served ritual "purity".

3. In relation to the aforementioned legal-religious tradition of the Old Covenant, an erroneous way of understanding moral purity(1) was formed. It was often understood in an exclusively outward and 'material' manner. In any case, there was an explicit tendency towards such an interpretation. Christ radically opposes it: nothing makes man unclean "from the outside", no "material" filthiness makes man impure in a moral, that is to say, inner sense. No ablution, not even ritual, is suitable in itself to produce moral purity. This has its exclusive source within man: it comes from the heart. It is probable that the respective Old Testament prescriptions (those, for example, found in Leviticus) (Lev 15:16-24; 18:1ff; 12:1-5) served not only for hygienic purposes, but also to attribute a certain dimension of interiority to what is corporeal and sexual in the human person. In any case, Christ was very careful not to link purity in the moral (ethical) sense with physiology and related organic processes. In the light of the words of Matthew 15:18-20, quoted above, none of the aspects of sexual "uncleanness", in the strictly somatic, biophysiological sense, enters per se into the definition of purity or impurity in the moral (ethical) sense.

4. The above statement ( Mt 15:18-20 ) is especially important for semantic reasons. In speaking of purity in the moral sense, i.e. the virtue of purity, we make use of an analogy, according to which moral evil is compared precisely to uncleanness. Certainly, this analogy has been part of the sphere of ethical concepts since the earliest times. Christ takes it up and confirms it in its full extent: 'What comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. This makes a man unclean'. Here Christ speaks of every moral evil, every sin, i.e. transgressions of the various commandments, and enumerates "evil intentions, murders, adulteries, prostitutions, thefts, false witness, blasphemies", without limiting himself to a specific kind of sin. It follows that the concept of 'purity' and 'impurity' in the moral sense is first and foremost a general concept, not a specific one: hence every moral good is a manifestation of purity, and every moral evil is a manifestation of impurity. The statement in Matthew 15:18-20 does not restrict purity to a single area of morality, i.e. to that connected with the commandment 'Thou shalt not commit adultery' and 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife', i.e. to that which concerns the mutual relations between man and woman, linked to the body and its concupiscence. Similarly, we can also understand the beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount, addressed to men who are 'pure in heart', both in a generic and more specific sense. Only the eventual contexts will allow us to delimit and specify this meaning.

5. The broader and more general meaning of purity is also present in the letters of St Paul, in which we shall gradually identify the contexts that explicitly restrict the meaning of purity to the "somatic" and "sexual" sphere, i.e. to that meaning that we can grasp from the words pronounced by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount on concupiscence, which is already expressed in "looking at the woman", and is equated with "adultery committed in the heart" (cf. Mt 5:27-28 ).

St Paul is not the author of the words on triple concupiscence. They are, as we know, found in the first letter of John. It can, however, be said that analogous to what for John ( 1 Jn 2:16-17 ) is the opposition within man between God and the world (between what comes "from the Father" and what comes "from the world") - an opposition that arises in the heart and penetrates into the actions of man as "concupiscence of the eyes, concupiscence of the flesh and pride of life" - St Paul notes another contradiction in the Christian: the opposition and at the same time the tension between the "flesh" and the "Spirit" (written with a capital letter, i.e. the Holy Spirit): "I say to you therefore, walk according to the Spirit, and you will not be led to satisfy the desires of the flesh; for the flesh has desires contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires contrary to the flesh; these things are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you would" ( Gal 5:16-17 ). It follows that life 'according to the flesh' is in opposition to life 'according to the Spirit'. "For those who live according to the flesh, think about the things of the flesh; but those who live according to the Spirit, about the things of the Spirit" ( Rom 8:5 ).

In the following analyses we will try to show that purity - the purity of heart, of which Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount - is properly realised in life "according to the Spirit".

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 10 December 1980]

The Gospel for today’s liturgy shows a few scribes and Pharisees amazed by Jesus’ attitude. They are scandalized because his disciples pick up food without first performing the traditional ritual ablutions. They think among themselves: “This way of doing things is contrary to the religious practice” (cf. Mk 7:2-5).

We too could ask ourselves: why do Jesus and his disciples disregard these traditions? After all, they are not bad things, but good ritual habits, simple cleansing before eating.  Why is Jesus  not concerned with this? Because for him it is important to bring faith back to its centre. We see it repeatedly in the Gospel: this bringing faith back to the centre. And to avoid a risk, which applies to those scribes as well as to us: to observe outward formalities, putting the heart and  faith in the background. Many times we too “put makeup” on our soul. Outward formality and not the heart of faith: this is a risk. It is the risk of a religiosity of appearances : looking good on the outside, while neglecting to purify the heart. There is always the temptation to “deal with God” with some outward devotion, but Jesus does not settle for this worship. Jesus does not want outward appearances, he wants a faith that touches the heart.

 In fact, immediately afterwards, he calls the people back to speak a great truth: “there is nothing outside  a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him” (v. 15). Rather, it is “from within, out of the heart” (v. 21) that evil things are born. These words are revolutionary, because in the mindset of the time, it was thought that certain foods or external contacts would make one impure. Jesus reverses the perspective: it is not what comes from the outside that is harmful, but rather, what is born from within.

Dear brothers and sisters, this also pertains to us. We often think that evil comes mainly from the outside: from other people’s conduct, from those who think badly of us, from society. How often we blame others, society, the world, for everything that happens to us! It is always the fault of “others”: it is the fault of people, of those who govern, of misfortune, and so on. It seems that problems always come from the outside. And we spend time assigning blame; but spending time blaming others is wasting time. We become angry, bitter and keep God away from our heart. Like those people in the Gospel, who complain, who are scandalized, who cause controversy and do not welcome Jesus. One cannot be truly religious while complaining: complaining poisons, it leads you to anger, to resentment and to sadness, that of the heart, which closes the door to God.

Let us ask the Lord today to free us from blaming others — like children: “No, it wasn’t me! It’s the other one, the other one…”. Let us ask in prayer for the grace not to waste time polluting the world with complaints, because this is not Christian. Jesus instead invites us to look at life and the world starting from our heart. If we look inside ourselves, we will find almost all that we despise outside. And if, with sincerity,  we will ask God to purify our heart, then indeed we will be starting to make the world cleaner. Because there is an infallible way to defeat evil: by starting to conquer it within yourself. The first Fathers of the Church, the monks, when they were asked: “What is the path of holiness, how should I begin”? The first step, they used to say, was to blame oneself: blame yourself. Blaming ourselves. How many of us, during the day, in a moment of  the day or a moment in the week, are able to blame ourselves within? “Yes, this one did this to me, the other one … that one, a  barbarity…”. But me? Do I do the same thing, or do I do it this way.... It is wisdom: learning to blame yourself. Try to do it, it will do you good. It does me good, when I manage to do so, but it is good for us, it is good for everyone.

May the Virgin Mary, who changed history through the purity of her heart, help us to purify our own, by overcoming first and foremost the vice of blaming others and complaining about everything.

[Pope Francis, Angelus 29 August 2021]

Traditions and ideal order

(Mk 7:1-13)

Religiosity can deceive the ideal order; the life of Faith promotes it, relying on a perfection and purity derived simply from the human dimension - of common sense and awareness.

This is how the world is improved and redeemed: by uniting with the Father’ Shekhinah; not perched in a fort, as if we were in a den.

And the full adventure, beyond borders, in the Spirit, makes us feel beautiful inside, instead of sick to be cured; indeed, capable of giving space to the magic of the Divine in ourselves and in relationships.

Without ever feeling besieged, ‘sons’ spontaneously react to events - with countless personalizing charitable initiatives, unrelated to any habit, chain, nomenclature.

Under the Herods dynasty the sense of the clan and the community were crumbling.

Due to survival problems, families were forced to close in on themselves, loosen ties, think about their own needs.

This closure was reinforced by the forms of devotion of the time in every respect. In vv.10-12 we see an incredible example of this: those who dedicated their inheritance to the Temple could leave their parents without help!

Offence and offering: injustice and normative behaviour - a strange connection, in the apparent form of an exemplary accent.

Compliance with the purity rules was a factor of ordinary marginalization for many people.

It was precisely the miserable who were regarded as ignorant and cursed species, because they were unable to fulfil; as a result, they were unable to receive the consolating blessing promised to Abraham.

A daily dripping that undermined the profound meaning of existing together.

In particular, ablutions were a kind of rite during which a “satisfying” gap between the sacred and the profane was celebrated - in detachment from people and situations considered impure.

Staying out of the supposed filth, none of the sick could ever be relieved.

So the rules were not a source of peace, but of slavery. Extending a charitable hand would even be sacrilegious.

In short, inhuman trifles were placed before the Law itself, nullifying its understanding spirit [fraternity that would have accentuated the enthusiasm of existing].

Placed in that context, people only embraced paths they already knew.

Woman and man lost the sense of their multifaceted existence. And life without the "opposites" weakened the Exodus of the whole people.

«Artfully you cancel the commandment of God, to observe your tradition» (Mk 7:9).

Jesus could not tolerate the closed world of conformist religiosity being bent and used to annihilate relationships.

This is why the control of the Pharisees is opposed by the freedom of the disciples (v.2), who refuse to obey that which does not make sense for concrete life - where visible love feeds ideal love.

The Master and Lord teaches that true worship is Closeness. In this way, there is a stage and a whole new order in the groove of the Word, which conquers all external links to the interiority.

Authentic 'ecstasy' is the 'purity of benefiting all' - not the self-satisfaction of the perfection model.

[Tuesday 5th wk. in O.T.  February 11, 2025]

Traditions or hypocritical ideas, and ideal order

(Mk 7:1-13)

"The heart of the believer is not too small for Him to whom Solomon's temple was not sufficient. For we are the temple of the living God. As it is written, 'I will dwell among them.

If an important person said to you, "I will come and dwell with you," what would you do? If your house is small, no doubt you would be bewildered, you would be frightened, you would prefer it not to happen. But fear not the coming of God, fear not the desire of your God. He does not shrink from you when he comes. On the contrary, when he comes, he will expand you' (St Augustine, Sermon 23:7).

Religiosity can deceive the ideal order; the life of Faith promotes it, relying on a perfection and purity derived simply from the human dimension - of common sense and realisation.

This is how one improves and redeems the world: by uniting with the Shekhinah of the Father; not by entrenching oneself in a fortress, as if in a lair.

And the full adventure, beyond boundaries, in the Spirit, makes us feel beautiful inside, instead of sick to be healed; indeed, capable of giving space to the magic of the Divine in ourselves and in our relationships.

Without ever feeling besieged, children react spontaneously to events - with countless personalising beneficial initiatives, unrelated to any habit, concatenation, nomenclature.

Under the Herod dynasty, the sense of clan and community was crumbling.

Although they felt the constant call of the Temple, because of pressing needs they were no longer open to communion.

There were too many taxes to pay, both to the government and to the House of God.

Thus debts increased, accentuating survival problems and fraying the brotherhood of kinship and solidarity of lineage.

Families were forced to close in on themselves, loosen their bonds, thin out attendance at meetings and think about their own needs.

This closure was reinforced by the devotion of the time in every respect, and here (vv.9-13) we see an incredible example of this: those who dedicated their inheritance to the Temple could leave their parents without help!

A picture of a creed that denied God's commandment in the name of God: korbàn [offering made to God] without mercy.

Ritual ruthlessness devoid of any glimmer of friendliness - yet religiously connected.

Offence and offering: injustice and normative behaviour.

Strange mutual bond, between two unrelated compasses - in the apparent form of the exemplary, devout, respectable, long-winded, confiding and pious accent.

"Beautifully you cancel God's commandment, to observe your tradition" (Mk 7:9).

The observance of purity rules was a factor of ordinary marginalisation for many people: women, children, the sick, foreigners, the poor.

It was the most unpleasant real situation for the (true) sacredness of life, for its enchantment - subjected to a kind of compulsory schooling, all distant from the unfortunate.

Precisely the wretched were considered ignorant and cursed, because they were incapable of global fulfilment. Consequently, unable to receive the consoling blessing promised to Abraham.

A daily drip that undermined the profound meaning of existing together.

In particular, ablutions were a kind of ritual during which a satisfying dividing of the sacred and profane - holiness - was celebrated in the detachment from people and situations considered impure.

By staying away from supposed filthiness, no one could ever be uplifted.

So the rules were not a source of peace, but of slavery: as mentioned above, those who could not observe them were considered ignoble, non-people.

To extend a charitable hand would even have been sacrilegious.

In short, inhuman trifles were placed before the Law itself, thwarting its inclusive spirit [fraternity that would have heightened the enthusiasm to exist].

Then, both narrow limits and extreme positions led to the incoherence of those who emptied the content of the Word and prevented a different path from being activated to achieve authenticity of purity.

"Perfection" had to be: immersion in dialogue, instead of that precipitate into an external ethical ideology. And in doing so, allowing oneself to be plunged by sacral ties that accentuated exclusive states, of self-satisfaction, exaltation - or addiction.

Dropped into that sterilised and humiliating context, identification prevailed over any vocation or missionary destiny.

Deceived and caged by one-way hoods, people only embraced paths they already knew.

Woman and man lost the sense of their multifaceted existence. And life without the "opposites" weakened the Exodus of the whole people.

Jesus could not bear that the closed world of religiosity could be bent and used to control, divide and discriminate - to annihilate the path and relationships. 

The satisfied in this sense became a source of mediocrity, everywhere - whereas as we also know, Joy is the fruit of Liberation; not of one-sided paths.

The sense of completeness is linked to the appreciation of differences. This concerns both personal and social events.

We know this infallibly, by the wisdom of Nature.

For the Tao Tê Ching (LXXXI) says: "The Way of Heaven is to benefit, and not to harm".

Everywhere we encounter our personal alarms, or material worries; a thousand distracting occupations. Even projects for the quality of relationships - perhaps still mixed with the learning of venerable customs or la page [unrelated expedients] that debilitate us.

Hence, the Pharisees' control is opposed by the disciples' freedom (v.2), who refuse to obey what makes no sense for real life - where visible love feeds ideal love.

Jesus teaches that true worship is practical closeness and authenticity, not literal adherence to patterns or cerebral doctrines.

In the groove of the Word there is a stage and a whole new order, which conquers all external connections to the interiority.

He links rite and action, faith and love, customary prescription and intimate obligation.

The only command capable of purifying and making us the image and likeness of the Person who knows how to meet his opposite, according to the unity in Spirit of worship.

When we accept the call of the Gospels, recognising it as a stimulus that corresponds and builds conviviality of differences, we feel less hard and proud.

If, on the other hand, we remain distant, we will go to church stumbling with traditions or with new ideas, however great, but without relating to the Father's plan of salvation.

The Eternal One does not want to snatch away our abilities, but to open us up to goodness and true ecstasy.

Purity of advantage - not of perfection.

To internalise and live the message:

What is the meaning of the purity taught by Jesus?

Is your faith near or far from life?

And therein lies the problem

And here is the problem: when the people are established in the land, and they are the depository of the Law, they are tempted to place their security and joy in something that is no longer the Word of the Lord: in possessions, in power, in other 'divinities' that are actually vain, they are idols. Of course, the Law of God remains, but it is no longer the most important thing, the rule of life; rather, it becomes a covering, a cover, while life follows other paths, other rules, often selfish individual and group interests. And so religion loses its authentic meaning, which is to live in listening to God in order to do his will - which is the truth of our being - and thus live well, in true freedom, and is reduced to the practice of secondary customs, which rather satisfy the human need to feel right with God. And this is a serious risk of every religion, which Jesus encountered in his time, but which can also occur, unfortunately, in Christianity. Therefore Jesus' words in today's Gospel against the scribes and Pharisees should make us think too.

[Pope Benedict, Angelus 2 September 2012].

Two identity cards

To know our true identity we cannot be "sitting Christians" but must have the "courage to always set out to seek the face of the Lord", because we are "the image of God". In the Mass celebrated at Santa Marta on Tuesday, 10 February, Pope Francis, commenting on the first liturgical reading - the account of creation in the book of Genesis (1:20 - 2:4) - reflected on an essential question for every person: "Who am I?".

Our 'identity card', said the Pope, is found in the fact that human beings were created 'in the image, according to the likeness of God'. But then, he added, "the question we can ask ourselves is: How do I know the image of God? How do I know what he is like in order to know what I am like? Where do I find the image of God?" The answer is to be found "certainly not on the computer, not in encyclopaedias, not in books", because "there is no catalogue where the image of God is". There is only one way "to find the image of God, which is my identity" and that is to set out: "If we do not set out, we will never know the face of God".

This desire for knowledge is also found in the Old Testament. The psalmists, Francis noted, "many times say: I want to know your face"; and "even Moses once said this to the Lord". But in reality "it is not easy, because setting out means leaving behind so many certainties, so many opinions of what the image of God is like, and seeking him". It means, in other words, 'letting God, life, put us to the test', it means 'taking risks', because 'only in this way can we come to know the face of God, the image of God: by setting out'. 

The Pope drew again on the Old Testament to recall that 'so did the people of God, so did the prophets'. For example "the great Elijah: after having conquered and purified the faith of Israel, he feels the threat of that queen and is afraid and does not know what to do. He sets out. And at a certain point, he prefers to die". But God "calls him, gives him food and drink and says: keep walking". So Elijah "arrives at the mountain and there he finds God". His was therefore 'a long journey, a painful journey, a difficult journey', but it teaches us that 'whoever does not set out, will never know the image of God, will never find the face of God'. It is a lesson for all of us: 'the seated Christians, the quiet Christians,' said the Pontiff, 'will not know the face of God. They have the presumption to say: 'God is like this, like that...', but in reality they 'do not know him'.

To walk, on the other hand, 'you need that restlessness that God himself has placed in our hearts and that leads you forward to seek him'. The same thing, the Pontiff explained, happened "to Job who, with his trial, began to think: but how is God, who allows this to me?". Even his friends 'after a great silence of days, began to talk, to discuss with him'. But all this was not helpful: 'with these arguments, Job did not know God'. Instead, 'when he allowed himself to be challenged by the Lord in the trial, he met God'. And it is precisely from Job that we can hear "that word that will help us so much in this journey of searching for our identity: 'I knew you by hearsay, but now my eyes have seen you'". This is the heart of the matter according to Francis: "the encounter with God" that can happen "only by setting out".

Certainly, he continued, "Job set out with a curse", even "he had the courage to curse life and his history: 'Cursed is the day I was born...'". Indeed, the Pope reflected, 'sometimes, in the journey of life, we do not find meaning in things'. The same experience was had by the prophet Jeremiah, who "after being seduced by the Lord, he heard that curse: 'But why me?'". He wanted to "sit quietly" and instead "the Lord wanted to make him see his face".

This is true for each of us: "to know our identity, to know the image of God, we must set out", be "restless, not quiet". Precisely this "is to seek the face of God".

Pope Francis then also referred to the passage in Mark's Gospel (7:1-13), in which "Jesus encounters people who are afraid to set out" and who build a sort of "caricature of God". But that "is a false identity card" because, the Pontiff explained, "these non-restless ones have silenced the restlessness of the heart: they paint God with the commandments" but in so doing "they forget God" in order to observe only "the tradition of men". And "when they are unsure, they invent or make another commandment". Jesus says to the scribes and Pharisees who heap up commandments: "Thus you nullify the Word of God with the tradition you have handed down, and of such things you do many". Precisely this "is the false identity card, the one we can have without setting out, quietly, without restlessness of heart".

In this regard, the Pope highlighted a "curious" detail: the Lord in fact "praises them but rebukes them where there is the sore spot. He praises them: 'You are truly skilful in rejecting God's commandment in order to observe your tradition'", but then "rebukes them where the strongest point of the commandments is with your neighbour". In fact, Jesus recalls that Moses said, "Honour your father and your mother, and whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death". He continues: "You, on the other hand, say: if one declares to one's father or mother that "what I should help you with, that is, give you food, give you clothing, give you to buy medicine, is Korbàn, an offering to God", do not allow them to do anything more for their father and mother". In doing so "they wash their hands of the tenderest, strongest commandment, the only one that has a promise of blessing". And so "they are quiet, they are quiet, they do not set out". This then "is the image of God that they have". In reality theirs is a path 'in quotes': that is, 'a path that does not walk, a quiet path. They deny their parents, but they fulfil the laws of tradition that they have made'.

Concluding his reflection, the bishop of Rome reproposed the meaning of the two liturgical texts as 'two identity cards'. The first is 'the one we all have, because the Lord made us that way', and it is 'the one that tells us: set out and you will know your identity, because you are the image of God, you are made in God's likeness. Set out and seek God'. The other instead reassures us: 'No, rest assured: fulfil all these commandments and this is God. This is the face of God'. Hence the hope that the Lord will "give us all the grace of courage to set out again and again, to seek the face of the Lord, that face that one day we will see but which here, on earth, we must seek."

[Pope Francis, St. Martha, in L'Osservatore Romano 11/02/2015].

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The theme of God’s Law, of his commandments, makes its entrance in the Liturgy of the Word […] It is an essential element of the Jewish and Christian religions, where the complete fulfilment of the law is love (cf. Rom 13:10). God’s Law is his word which guides men and women on the journey through life, brings them out of the slavery of selfishness and leads them into the “land” of true freedom and life. This is why the Law is not perceived as a burden or an oppressive restriction in the Bible. Rather, it is seen as the Lord’s most precious gift, the testimony of his fatherly love, of his desire to be close to his People, to be its Ally and with it write a love story.

This is what the devout Israelite prays: “I will delight in your statutes, / I will not forget your word.... Lead me in the path of your commandments, / for I delight in it” (Ps 119[118]:16, 35). In the Old Testament the person who passes on the Law to the People on God’s behalf is Moses. After the long journey in the wilderness, on the threshold of the promised land, he proclaims: “Now, O Israel, give heed to the statutes and the ordinances which I teach you, and do them; that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, gives you” (Deut 4:1). And this is the problem: when the People put down roots in the land and are the depository of the Law, they are tempted to place their security and joy in something that is no longer the Word of God: in possessions, in power, in other ‘gods’ that in reality are useless, they are idols. Of course, the Law of God remains but it is no longer the most important thing, the rule of life; rather, it becomes a camouflage, a cover-up, while life follows other paths, other rules, interests that are often forms of egoism, both individual and collective.

Thus religion loses its authentic meaning, which is to live listening to God in order to do his will — that is the truth of our being — and thus we live well, in true freedom, and it is reduced to practising secondary customs which instead satisfy the human need to feel in God’s place. This is a serious threat to every religion which Jesus encountered in his time and which, unfortunately, is also to be found in Christianity. Jesus’ words against the scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel should therefore be food for thought for us as well.

Jesus makes his own the very words of the Prophet Isaiah: “This People honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Mk 7:6-7; cf. Is 29,13). And he then concludes: “You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men” (Mk 7:8).

The Apostle James too alerts us in his Letter to the danger of false piety. He writes to the Christians: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (Jas 1:22). May the Virgin Mary, to whom we now turn in prayer, help us to listen with an open and sincere heart to the word of God so that every day it may guide our thoughts, our decisions and our actions.

[Pope Benedict, Angelus 2 September 2012]