September 3, 2024
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B) on September 1, 2024, at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Parish in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; Psalm 15; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.
In our gospel passage today, Jesus has a serious disagreement with the Pharisees and scribes about what Mark calls “the tradition of the elders.” For the most part, Jesus is not talking about the 613 precepts that all Jews were expected to keep. Instead, he’s addressing other traditions that Jewish leaders had added over the centuries.
So, when the Pharisees complain that Jesus’ disciples are not washing their hands, it’s not that their hands were dirty. It’s not that the disciples were considered “unclean” by the 613 precepts of the Torah. It’s that they were neglecting to follow an extra tradition — a ritual cleansing — added by the Pharisees themselves.
Jesus’ response is a challenge to us: it’s easier to get all the details of the ritual correct than to constantly live in right relationship with God. What’s most important in religion: the tenets of belief, the rules of practice, or our relationships? Let us ask God for mercy as we try to become more Christ-like!
Lord Jesus, you have shown us the way to the Father. Lord have mercy.
Christ Jesus, you are our spiritual daily bread. Christ, have mercy.
Lord Jesus, you will continue to nourish and guide us at every moment of our lives. Lord, have mercy.
There are two sides to the practice of any religion: right belief and right action. In almost any tradition, there are certain things that one must believe, and there are certain actions that one must do.
In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, both right belief and right practice are essential to the faith. As we’ll hear James declare in two weeks: “Faith without works is dead.” Jesus condemns the Pharisees for emphasizing the importance of right action while not holding to right belief. But he’s not saying that right belief is more important than right action. Both are absolutely necessary. Jesus simultaneously condemns the Pharisees for claiming that the traditions they’ve made up are essential right actions of Judaism.
Moses told the people not to add to or subtract from the Law, and Jesus teaches a similar thing here. But other parts of the Bible tell us that it’s more complex than that. At some points in his teaching, Jesus himself expanded the Law. St. Paul taught that most of the Law did not apply to Christians who were not Jewish.
Determining what’s essential to a religion can be confusing. When I first went to Mass at the University of Rochester Newman Community in college, it was so different from what I had experienced growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. There were no pews or kneelers, the chairs were arranged in monastic style, everyone was dressed casually, and I didn’t know any of the music. But I came to appreciate how accessible and relevant the liturgies felt to me.
People who worship at Old St. Mary’s come from a wide variety of communities spread over much of the world. Some of us come from places where the communion procession is not done in orderly lines like it is in cultures influenced by British and German colonizers. Some of us grew up with copious amounts of incense at Mass, while others are more concerned about allergies and the environment. Lively dancing is an important part of the Church in Africa and Oceania, but it makes a lot of Americans uncomfortable. But over time, most of us come to realize that the beloved practices of our home communities are not essential to the right actions of Roman Catholicism.
Figuring out what is essential is difficult even for “experts” within the Church. Throughout its history, Catholics have called councils to determine when right practices may no longer reflect our evolving understanding of our right beliefs. One of the most important of these councils was the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. People are probably most familiar with Vatican II’s changes to the liturgy, moving from a rigid uniformity in how Mass was celebrated worldwide, to allowing a greater diversity within our unity.1 Vatican II also expanded the role of lay people, encouraged everyone to study sacred scripture, and called for Catholics to engage with the outside world, rather than to isolate themselves.
Vatican II called for new practices in other areas, too. For the first time in Church history, Vatican II recognized the right of all human beings to religious freedom. In the wake of so many Christians — including Catholics! — using the Bible to justify the Holocaust of Jews during World War II, Vatican II redefined the relationship between the Church and other world religions.2 Vatican II also brought the Church into the ecumenical movement, strengthening the worldwide effort to foster unity among all Christians.
This has been a fairly intellectual homily until this point, but now we’ll move to some practical wisdom from the ecumenical movement that can be applied to many other challenges facing our society today. The division of Christ’s believers into more than 40,000 different denominations is scandalous. We all have an obligation to work for Christian unity, recognizing that the Holy Spirit has given different spiritual gifts to each Christian denomination. So, what is necessary for Christian unity, and what are differences from human tradition? It can be challenging to distinguish.3 We often distill the teachings of the Vatican II document on ecumenism down to 10 words: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” One way to understand Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees is this: the actions that had evolved in the Pharisaical tradition were non-essentials that didn’t need to be followed by everyone.
In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity. We don’t need to look only to our interactions with Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Baptists to practice this. Every local parish community needs to adopt this motto within itself. Ministry groups, devotional practices, and weekend retreats can be life-changing, but we should never consider that parishioners who don’t belong to such a group, don’t pray in such a way, or haven’t gone on such a retreat are lesser members. And we can apply this to our national politics right now, where the forces that divide us are also scandalous. Political groups want to convince us that every issue is essential and that there is no place for charity.
In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity. When it comes right down to it, the key to the life of faith and the key to our political system is not about right belief or right practice. It’s about right relationship with God. And our relationship with God will show in the way we treat all of our brother and sister human beings.
Notes:
- Four of the 16 documents produced by Vatican II are dogmatic constitutions, and they may be the most important documents produced by the Church since the Council of Trent concluded in the 16th century. The previous two sentences of this homily made reference to the 4 dogmatic constitutions: Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963) on liturgy, Lumen Gentium (1964) on the people of God, Dei Verbum (1965) on the Bible, and Gaudium et Spes on the Church in the modern world. ↩
- This paragraph refers to 3 other documents of Vatican II that are of lower authority than the dogmatic constitutions: Dignitatis Humanae (1965) on religious freedom, Nostra Aetate (1965, with Paulist Fr. Tom Stransky as the primary author) on interreligious dialogue, and Unitatis Redintegratio (1964) on Christian unity. ↩
- This is a paraphrase of paragraph #4 of Unitatis Redintegratio. ↩