Spirituality of the Readings
The Heart of the Matter
The people in this week’s Gospel are quarreling about who has and who hasn’t washed his hands for dinner.
You would know, if you were a follower of the Jewish custom of that time, that every person was required to wash up before eating. This rule was “a tradition of the elders,” to preserve physical health, of course. But Jesus is now telling people they have to live also from the inner meaning of traditions and laws. Let’s look.
What about children? They do not yet have a developed interior value system, as parents know.
“It is bedtime. Let’s brush our teeth and get our pajamas on.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know, it is hard to stop playing and go to bed. I understand.
But bedtime is here so let's get started.”
“But why?”
“Because we have to get our rest so we can be bright and cheerful tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so, now get moving.”
Or something more extended! Rules, the right ones, often must be imposed upon a child.
As we grow up, the child’s “why?” question gets answered by experience and maturity. Adults go to bed because they need a certain amount of sleep each night and they know it. Well, at least a lot of us do.
But why have rules and laws in the first place? I have heard the following: rules are meant to describe the minimum that has to be done in order to belong to a country or state or city or business or group or family. Not too many rules, not too few.
This is difficult to achieve. Under the best circumstances, people follow rules because their allegiance comes from within and they act from their own desire.
Apply this to a group.
Take a faith-sharing group, for instance. It has an implicit expectation, even a requirement, that its members be present at each weekly meeting. What if a person shows up only once or twice a year, but in that case, is the heart-and-soul of the discussion? And what if another person attends every single meeting but contributes nothing and in fact has no interest in the topics?
Neither one really fits well into the group, but which would you rather work with? The first has real relevance to the organization and might not need much convincing to come more often (and would therefore better comply to the rule). But it would be much harder to kindle a fire in the second, wouldn’t it, the one who is following the external rule but, out of fear perhaps, not its insides.
The interior life of Jesus is the Holy Spirit. Jesus knew that any law in the Kingdom of God must emerge from love or else be empty. He was angry that leaders of the people had manipulated exterior laws to serve their own agendas. “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,” he said.
He is not telling the people to ignore the laws and to just have just inner devotion. He is saying you must have both, external plus internal adherence.
Would it be worth it for you and me to look at the various obligations in our lives and weigh how much they flow also from our inner values and convictions?
Yes? Well, maybe that would help us have the right heart both inside and outside.
John Foley, SJ
**From Saint Louis University