1 September 2024 - 22nd Sunday "B"
Deut 4:1-2, 6-8; Jas 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Homily
Each of the three readings we have just heard invites us to listen to the Word of God and to let it bear fruit in us.
In the reading from the book of Deuteronomy, we have one of the earliest versions of the famous Shema Israel - ‘Hear, O Israel’ -- ‘ Listen to the commandments and decrees that I teach you... So you will live and come into possession of the land that the Lord is giving you ‘. In the second reading, the apostle Saint James invites us to ‘ humbly accept the word of God sown within [us] ’, because it is capable of saving us. And finally, in the Gospel, after his discussion with the Pharisees and Scribes about the precepts of ritual purity, Jesus again addresses the crowd, saying: ‘ Listen to me, all of you, and understand. -- Always this call to ‘ listen ’.
These three readings bear witness to three distinct moments in the history of salvation. The word of God always reaches us in our precise historical and geographical context. The first reading took place at the time of the birth of the Jewish people, and also at the time of the birth of cultic religion. The moment when the various peoples of humanity moved from nomadism to sedentarism is the moment when all the great religions of humanity were born. It was also the time when philosophy and contemplation appeared. With planned agriculture replacing the constant quest for food with hunting and fishing, leisure time was finally given over to reflection, philosophy and religion. All the cults developed at that time were agrarian cults involving the offering of products of the land, agriculture and animal husbandry. But already the great prophets of Israel were reminding us that all these rites were merely ways for human beings to express to God the attitude of their hearts, and that they were totally empty and devoid of meaning if they were not accompanied by works of justice and charity.
The Apostle James, still in the time of the first Christian generation, similarly asserted that all so-called ‘religious’ behaviour is empty of meaning and therefore null and void if we do not take care of the needy, if we do not help the widow and the orphan.
Finally, in the Gospel, Jesus reminds both the crowds who come to him and the Pharisees and scribes that the purity that counts before God is not the ‘ritual purity’ that ancient religions, including that of Israel, were concerned with, and that they strove to achieve through rituals and cultic practices, but the purity of the heart.
The text of the Letter of Saint James clearly shows that already in the first Christian generation, the first Christians were in danger of falling back into formalism and ritualism. James reminds them that being a Christian does not consist in fulfilling certain rules and performing certain rites; it is a commitment of the whole person to follow Christ, which also implies a commitment to our neighbours.
There is a spiritual dimension to being human that cannot be ignored. A certain form of religiosity linked to an agrarian period of civilisation - and which had been perpetuated for several millennia - was to some extent swept away by the development of the industrial and technological revolutions and then by the arrival of the communication and information age. Instead of moaning about the decline of one form of religious ‘practice’, we can see it as a challenge - a challenge to allow the newness of the Gospel to develop more fully in our day, so that the spiritual dimension of the human being is expressed ever more fully in the authenticity of everyday life, in particular through works of justice and sharing, rather than through rites linked to another cultural stage of humanity.
Jesus had already explained that the purity of heart that manifests itself in every facet of daily existence must replace the ritual purity of primitive religions, which implied a distinction between the profane and the sacred and a distinction between pure people and... others. This distinction between the sacred and the profane was what allowed Israel to consider itself superior to all other peoples. In today's Gospel, Jesus' disciples are accused of not respecting this separation between the pure and the impure. Jesus calls us to overcome this form of religiosity.
Let the Word of God penetrate our personal and collective ‘today’ and challenge us to an ever-renewed conversion of our way of being.
Armand Veilleux