For five Sundays in a row, the reading of the Gospel according to Mark has been interrupted because the liturgy made us meditate on the discourse that Jesus pronounced in the synagogue of Capernaum, after the sign of the distribution of the loaves and fishes. Today we resume reading the Gospel according to Mark that will accompany us until the beginning of Advent.
Jesus did not perform the ritual purifications, and he taught his disciples not to give importance to this practice. The evangelist Mark, who writes for an audience in Rome that does not know these customs of the Jews, now feels the need to explain to his readers this obsession of the Jews with purifications.
The Jews paid great attention to the meticulous execution of the ritual washings, and insisted on its scrupulous execution, but they forgot the meaning of the rite itself and lost its value. We must be careful also about these scrupulously executed rites in our liturgical celebrations because they can be dangerous, the meaning can be forgotten. It makes us feel satisfied because a rite has been performed, but the value of this rite, the rite’s memory is lost. And this also happens to us. Let’s think about a sacred rite that we often do: the sign of the Cross: do we think about what it means when we make the sign of the Cross every time?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus reproaches the Jews precisely for having turned their beautiful traditions into a pure law that everyone, without exception, was obliged to observe. But with time, the meaning was forgotten and only the norm remained, tradition stripped of meaning. It became a mere automatic rite, a meaningless gesture.
The Pharisees were not bad people. Paul, who was a Pharisee, says in chapter 10 of his letter to the Romans, “I give them credit that they are zealous people before God, people who scrupulously observe the Torah.” But they became slaves of their religious traditions, and not even Jesus was able to set them free and lead them to freedom and introduce them to the freedom and joy of God’s unconditional love.
The Pharisees are obsessed with the regulations of purifying hands before eating. “Why do your disciples eat with defiled hands?,” they ask. And Jesus calls them hypocrites. For the Pharisee, the pure hands were those that performed the ritual and for Jesus the pure hands were those that did works of love. It is the works of charity that would purify our hands. Still today, some are afraid to take communion in the hand because they think that their hands are impure. Are our tongues that speak all the wrongs about our brethren any better than our hands?
For your reflection
What meaning do the acts in which we participate in our Christian community have for us? Are they only an obligation that we fulfil out of fear of punishment?
Father Fernando Torres CMF
www.ciudadredonda.org
Translated by Father Alberto Rossa CMF
