TWENTY SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - B

TWENTY SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – B (Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23) Theme: We are invited to carry the Word of God in Our Hearts Reflection: Listen to the word and practice it - We have to decide to follow and to serve Jesus. This is the message that we have reflected on the last Sunday. We have already decided to walk in the word and footsteps of Jesus. After meditating on the entire sixth chapter of St. John’s gospel we have joined our voices with that of Peter. Taking his words and making them our own we have accepted and embraced the prayer: “to whom shall we go Lord, you have the words of eternal life and we have known and believed that you are the Holy One of God.” We have also assumed to ourselves the words of Joshua: “As for me and for my family, we will serve the Lord.” With this we have made a choice to follow and serve the Lord until the last breath of our life. We are nourished by the words of Jesus which are spirit and life. We are satisfied by the living bread which is his body and blood. Now we are not for ourselves but for the Lord. It is for this reason of being nourished and satisfied with his word and Eucharist that we have decided to follow and to serve him. - What does it mean to follow him and serve him in its profound significance? It means this: carrying him in our heart. The hour of just listening to his word and to watching his celebrations is over. Now is the hour of living what we have received. How long we pass the time just with the tongue and with the ears? How long we keep on talking and hearing what the Lord has accomplished for us? Now is the time to ‘act with the heart’. Our life is not only that of the prophet who speak in the name of the Lord. Our life is more than that. It is that of the living testimony. Our words should testify what our actions are. Our actions should reveal what our words are. There should be coherence and balance between what we say and what we do. This is the true and sincere testimony of life. We live by our hearts and not anymore by our lips and by our outside appearances. The word of God takes us into the depth of our heart. We have to make a movement without stopping ourselves with the mind and with the tongue. - What to carry in our heart? We have to carry Jesus himself in our hearts. He is the master and ruler of our heart. He needs to be there. We have to allow him to be there. He seeks that we open our heart to him. He wants that we offer him our heart as his dwelling. What happens when we give our heart to him? He makes it his own. He fills it with his presence. He feeds it with his word and spirit. He uplifts it to the desires of heaven. It is here we have the ultimate meaning of Paul’s words: “it is not I who live but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Who stays in our heart, that means, in our whole life, is Jesus himself. We carry within us none else that Jesus himself. Our words become his words. Rather, his words flow out from our lips. Our actions become his actions. Rather, his actions gush out from our hands. Our love becomes his love. Rather, his love emerges from our heart. This is the significance of having coherence in our love. This is the meaning of carrying Jesus in our hearts. The readings of today exhort us in this mode of comprehension and guide us towards the life of integrity. God wants the spirit of life than mere observation of the law: Sincerity of heart and the coherence of life - Israel is God’s nation (first reading): The people Israel is the nation elected and redeemed by God. They have to be always such a holy and blessed nation. They can sustain in being such a nation only when they carry the law of the Lord in their hearts. If we glance well the first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, we encounter three important phases in the admonition that is made by Moses to his people. o First – they live and enter into the God’s land: listening and practising the law and the command of God is the only step to have the life and to enter into the Promised Land: “Now, Israel, listen the law and the norm that I teach you, and you keep them in practice, so that you live and enter into the possession of the land that the Lord, God of your fathers, is to give you” (v.1). o Second – they become source of wisdom and intelligence to the world: by listening and observing the commandments of the Lord they will have the authentic knowledge and the true intelligence and the world looks at them for the inspiration. They become the fountain of world’s life because they have the true spirit of wisdom and knowledge. The words of Moses clarify this: “observe them therefore, and keep them in practice, because, that will be your wisdom and your intelligence to the eyes of the peoples, who, hearing all these laws, will say: ‘this is the great nation and his people are wise and intelligent” (v.6). o Third – they have to acknowledge and embrace the Lord who made himself near to them: they become the holy nation and chosen people of God because of the sincere observation of the law. They have their God very closer to them. No other nation has this possibility. Their God is so kind and loving that he wants to stay with and within them and he remains in their heart in the form of the commandment of love. He comes closer to them when they invoke him. Once again we have the question of Moses raised to his people to affirm this: “In fact, what great nation has the gods close to it as the Lord, our God, who is near to us every time we call upon him? Which nation has the just law and norm as the legislation which I give you today?” (Vv. 7-8). o In this way, Moses exhort his people to be a nation that is worthy of being called “God’s nation”. It happens when they give importance to the presence of the Lord amidst them. It happens when they hear his voice and practices the commands he writes on their hearts. This condition applies also to us. We have to listen and practice well the word of God in order to have the possibility of living and entering into God’s kingdom. We have to heed and observe well the law of God in order to become ourselves the fountain of wisdom and knowledge to the world. We have to give way to the command of God’s love in order to enjoy his presence with us. In a word, we too are invited to become God’s nation by listening to him and by sincerely opening our heart to him. - God’s religion (second reading): St. James goes little further to call God’s nation, the people who listen and practice the word, as a religion that is holy and without stain (James 1:27). He encourages his community with the truth. He says that Jesus Christ is the great gift and perfect present which has come down from heaven (1:17). The word that has descended from the Father and the word that has generated us as his new creation is Jesus himself (1:18). Such a Word is with us. Such a Word made itself the word of truth for us. Of this truth we have to be attentive and receptive. We cannot neglect either its presence or its power. The apostle askes his people to do two things: o First – we need to embrace the word with docility. The word is not just listened but it is planted in us and this word has the capacity to bring us to the salvation. The presence of the word is this: it is like a seed in our hearts and it is already implanted within us; and the seed that is sown in us ‘begins its growth’ and it starts its movement towards becoming bigger and larger. Our life starts taking its form and not according what we think and do but according to the presence of the seed and its work. The power of the seed is this: it reaps for us the fruit of salvation; it leads us to the gates of heaven; and finally it offers for us the possibility of being God’s chosen people. The only thing we need to do is to accept and to take to our heart the word that is presented to us as the greatest gift of God. The attitude we need to manifest in embracing this word is the docility. We need to be humble and receptive so that we permit the word to grow in us. We need to open the space for God’s word to act in us and to initiate its operation of making us new creatures. o Second – we need to extend our hands to the world. What is carried in our heart is not only for ourselves but is kept open for others. The word we have implanted within us enables us to stand by others and stand for others. The love that is interior becomes operative in the exterior world. It is here that we become the true religion of God: by reaching out to the needy and by keeping ourselves away from the world’s contamination (James 1:27). We have two parallel directions to take: towards interior life – we have to limit ourselves to the word that is in us without giving any chance to the world to control us; and towards exterior life – we have to cross the selfish boundaries and make a room for others to enter into our sphere so that they find their refuge in us. Thus, we are invited to become a true religion: a religion that has Jesus as the corner stone, a religion that has a commandment of love as the foundation and basement, a religion that has word of God and tradition as the pillars and a religion that has the sanctification of the Holy Spirit as the roof. In the word of the teaching of the Church: the word has the revelation as the voice, Jesus Christ as the face, the Church as the house and the mission as the way. - Testimony of the heart, not of the lips (Gospel): The gospel is very strong in proposing a life of sincerity and coherence. Jesus, taking the occasion of confrontation with the Pharisees who give lot of important to the outside rituals, offers an important teaching to his disciples. The question of the washing of the hands leads to the question of looking inside. The Pharisees and Scribes came to Jesus to question him: “why your disciples do not act according to the old tradition, but takes the food with the impure hands”? (Mark 7:5). In order to answer them Jesus quotes from the law and prophets they themselves know well. He reveals the condition in which they are: they praise with the lips but their heart is away from God (v.6). He shows them that they are not worthy of glorifying God because they neglect what has been handed over to them by Moses and teach to the people what they have invented for their convenient authoritative life (v.7). And finally, points out their futile observations because it is not coming from the love of God: “you, reject the commandment of God and observe the tradition of men” (v.8). - In a word, Jesus teaches them that what is more important, is not just the lips to sing for God but a heart that embraces him with the unconditional love. He invites them to realize that the observance of the law is important but it should not remain only peripheral and formal but it should enter into the depths of actual living. He calls them to understand well (v.14) that the structure of religion is needed but they should never remain exterior, instead, it should lead the people to the integrity and coherence of life. Ears are needed to listen to the word. Lips are necessary to speak the word. But what God desires is something else and something very interior and deeper: the heart. Carrying the word in the heart is very important. That means, building the coherence between the word spoken and the deed done is what Jesus is asking us to opt for. Therefore, the spirit of the law is to be taken into consideration instead of going for the futile observation of the exterior rites. We have to say good bye to the hypocrisy and live an honest and sincere life. To put it in the words of Pope Benedict in the inaugural homily of the synod on the Word of God: “when God speaks, he asks always for the response; His action of salvation demands the human cooperation; His love attends correspondence. (…). Only the Word of God can change the heart of man in profundity, and it is important, then, the individual faithful and the community enter into an intimacy with it.” Two tasks ahead of us: Leaving the hypocrisy and living the concrete love - As we hear the word of God today and as we see it implanted in our hearts today, we are also given two tasks of faith: Jesus calls us to abandon the life of double-mindedness or hypocrisy and he also invites us to welcome the life of love. - Leave out the life of hypocrisy: the first task of faith before us is to leave out the attitude of Pharisees and scribes. Their attitude consists in making many laws for the people but failing to practice them for themselves. As Jesus demonstrates, they lay big burdens on the shoulder of the common people but would not lift even a small finger to help them. What they speak is very sweet because they speak well. What they do is very pretending because they do not do what they speak. There is coherence between their lips and their hands because their words and actions go in two opposite directions. There is no integrity between their mind and their heart because they what they think is away from what they feel. This is the life of pretention and this is the life of double-mindedness and this is the life of hypocrisy. We are given the task of getting away from this kind of attitude. Lot many times we also pretend to be good outside but inside we are altogether different beings. We live with hypocrisy. The worst thing is that we search some excuses also for this kind of living. We blame that the society in which we live is such that we cannot but fall into such temptation. We blame that the politics are misguiding us in the various directions and thus we miss the way. We blame that the technological developments and the electronic media is tearing us apart with various misconceptions. Finally we justify ourselves for our attitude. In our personal life and to get the things done in our own life, we highlight the aspect of freedom and liberty. We say that we are free beings and we can do whatever we want. We forget conveniently the truth that the same principle of freedom applies to every sphere. The world is offering many options both for good and for bad and it is we who have to decide what to choose. The faith is offering the life of joy, peace and love and it is in our hands either to accept it or to reject it. The choice is ours. The decision is free. There is no room for blaming anything else than our own attitude. Therefore, instead of looking for some escape from the demands of faith, let us search for the integrity of life: let us connect both the mind and heart, and let us knot both the words and actions. Thus we may become the true nation of God. - Live the interaction of love: our faith is not just a formal way but it is a concrete task. We have to live our faith. Profession of it in the baptism leads us to its practice in life. Therefore, the faith or any liturgical celebrations are not mere exterior rituals. Even the Holy Eucharist what we are celebrating now is not just an external rite. Rather it is an interaction of love between God and us: God comes to meet us and we set out to meet him. We have to live this moment of love. Many times we fail to do it. We fulfil our Sunday obligation of seeing a mass. Very good. But not enough. We need to do more. External performance of the rite should make us enter into the depth of our heart, the fountain of love. Let us consider the interaction of human love. What happens there? We prepare well to meet someone we love. We want that those precious moments remain as long standing memories of life. We desire that those moments would not ever over. In other words, we try to prolong and preserve this interaction all through our life. Do we not need to have the same attitude in the case of love interaction between God and us? Do we really live that moment? Mass is the love interaction. Do we prepare well for this moment? Do we have enough time to spend for it or we get agitated if mass becomes long? How do we look at it? We have to examine and re-examine ourselves. We have to allow the love of Jesus flow through our heart. This happens when we listen to the word attentively and receive the bread sincerely. In other words, we have to live and share this moment of love interaction. Thus, we can become God’s religion. - We have these two tasks to fulfil: to throw out our hypocrisy and pretension; and to implant within us the interaction of love. This is the meaning of carrying Jesus in our hearts. And in this way we do justice to our reflection of the theme: We are invited to carry the Word of God in Our Hearts.