The Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 29, 2021

Mark 7:1–8, 14–15, 21–23

When the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they observed that some of his disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands. —For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews, do not eat without carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the elders. And on coming from the marketplace they do not eat without purifying themselves. And there are many other things that they have traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and kettles and beds.— So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?” He responded, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” He summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.  “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”

One of the great faults we possess and one of the worst consequences of original sin, is that we tend to take the sign for the reality.  We take the appearance for the thing itself.  So common is this fault that it seems inevitable in cases where decisions and judgments must be made.  We “judge the book by its cover” repeatedly, despite sorry experience.  The devil and his followers know this very well: “False apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no wonder: for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11, 13-14).  However, “by their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7, 20).

In the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, the Pharisees, blind to the meaning of purity, mandate rituals for purity that could be, at best, mere signs of the reality.  The Pharisees, believing that their rituals did in fact render them pure, ignored the actual impurity within themselves.  The ostentation of their rituals confirmed their thinking for them.  The Lord strives to correct them, pointing out the limitations of the sign and announcing the end to signs, for with the Incarnation of the Son of God, the time of the Old Law, which could do no more than command signs, had ended.  

In other places, the Lord and the Apostles praise purity.  The Lord himself declares, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5, 8).  Here, he condemns impurity and lists actions which cause a person to become truly impure, or that signify that impurity is already present in a person, out of which he performs these actions.  The Greek word translated as “unchastity” actually means fornication and, in general, sexual immorality.  The word translated as “envy” is actually two words, meaning “an evil eye”, which signifies envy along with hatred of a person for having something the envious person covets.  The sins listed by the Lord “defile” a person, he says.  That is, they do more than make the perpetrator ritually unclean: they corrupt him from within his heart, so that he is fit for nothing than damnation.

The pure of heart possess a freedom to love and to understand which those who are impure deny to themselves.  This is why only they shall see God.