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?