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Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
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February 8, 2022“This people honors me only with lip service, while their hearts are far from me.”
In today’s passage from Mark’s gospel (7:1-13), a group of Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem come upon Jesus and His disciples and notice that the disciples are eating without having ritualistically purified their hands beforehand. Not surprisingly, they criticize the disciples.
Jesus, not surprisingly, goes on to take them to task for their hypocrisy. His point is very concisely conveyed and summarized in His quote from the prophet Isaiah speaking on God’s behalf, with which I began this reflection above.
Lip service vs the heart. Does this not say it all? How easy it is to “talk the talk” (Love God with all your heart….. Love your neighbor as yourself) but not to “walk the walk”.
This said, I found this passage raising a slightly different issue/question in my mind: why do we find it so easy to judge people negatively? And, like the pharisees and scribes in today’s gospel, often with precious little knowledge of the other person’s heart? What does this say about us?
Or put in the terminology of today’s gospel, where are our hearts??
We know intellectually that thinking/speaking ill of others brings us not one iota of benefit. To say nothing of not benefitting the object of our ‘concern’. So why does it come to us so quickly, easily, and often?
The psychological and the spiritual are intertwined. They are not identical; they are not the same thing. But they are related. St. Ignatius recognized this and incorporated this insight into his Spiritual Exercises. No small gift to the Church going forward.
In this context I’ve come to appreciate much more a seemingly insignificant and brief exchange between Peter and Jesus at the very end of John’s gospel. As Peter and Jesus are walking away after their exchange about Peter loving Jesus etc., Peter notices John (the beloved disciple) walking behind them.
“What about him, Lord?”
To which Jesus replies,
“What does it matter to you? You are to follow me.”
Isn’t following Jesus a rather full time endeavor? Doesn’t this require our complete focus of attention and effort?
Why are we so often focused on the behavior of others??
