HEAR ME, ALL OF YOU, AND UNDERSTAND

Dt 4,1-2.6-8; Ps 14; Jm 1,17-18.21b-22.27; Mk 7,1-8.14-15.21-23
2 SEPTEMBER
In the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, the Lord states with great solemnity that He has not given any disposition on the cult, on sacrifices, on the whole religious apparatus of his time. He gave his people only one command: observing his Law.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Heap your holocausts upon your sacrifices; eat up the flesh! In speaking to your fathers on the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I gave them no command concerning holocaust or sacrifice. This rather is what I commanded them: Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper. But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed. They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me. From the day that your fathers left the land of Egypt even to this day, I have sent you untiringly all my servants the prophets. Yet they have not obeyed me nor paid heed; they have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers. When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you either; when you call to them, they will not answer you. Say to them: This is the nation which does not listen to the voice of the Lord, its God, or take correction. Faithfulness has disappeared; the word itself is banished from their speech (Jer 7,21-28).

If God has never commanded these things, he must never also commanded to wash hands before taking food. They are traditions of men that have no value with the Lord. Instead, here is what scribes and Pharisees do. They abolish the Commandment of God, declare his Law null and in its place they give value of Divine law to a norm of hygiene that can be observed, but very often it cannot be observed because there is not even water to drink. Yet man is like that. Is not today, for many Christians the observance of a “vow” worth more than a human life? One confesses if he has violated a norm that the person had given himself. Abortion, divorce, euthanasia, adultery, slander, false testimony are now considered normal things. The law of man is inviolable and it abolishes almost all the Commandments. The Law of God, on the other hand, must be repealed. It does not belong to man. Scribes Pharisees, chief priests, elders of the people can kill Christ and eat Easter with pure, immaculate and uncontaminated conscience. However, they do not enter the Praetorium of Pilate to avoid contamination. Otherwise they could not have celebrated the Passover of the Lord.

Now when the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 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 honours 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, In the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, the Lord states with great solemnity that He has not given any disposition on the cult, on the sacrifices, on the whole religious apparatus of his time. He gave his people only one command: to observe his law.

Jesus, the true prophet of the living God, reveals to the man that the heart is what makes impure everything that man does. Eating with unwashed hands does not make man unclean. It is disobedience to the Law of the Father that makes man unclean. The traditions of men are indifferent to the Moral law. Replacing the Moral law with our traditions is true aberration. No one should lend himself to this abomination of spiritual death.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints make us with perfect obedience to the Law of the Lord.