Daily Mass Gospel Reflection- Defiling Law

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 8-29-2021 | Aux. Bishop R. Barron

[MurphsLaw]

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who imposed their interpretation of the Law on the Israelites. Keep in mind that the first Christians and the writers of the first Christian documents were all Jews, or at least people formed by a Jewish thought world. They made sense of Jesus in terms of what were, to them, the Scriptures.

Jesus himself was an observant Jew, and the themes and images of the Holy Scriptures were elemental for him. And he presented himself as the one who would not undermine the Law and the prophets but fulfill them.

All of those social and religious conventions that had effectively divided Israel, he sought to overcome and to expose as fraudulent. He reached out to everyone: rich and poor, healthy and sick, saints and sinners. And he embodied the obedience of Israel: "I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me"; "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me."

[MurphsLaw]

Humbly welcome the word that has been
planted in you,
and is able to save your souls.
Be doers of the word and not hearers
only, deluding yourselves.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before
God and the Father is this:
to care for orphans and widows in their
affliction
and to keep oneself unstained by the
world.

+++He responded,
“Well did Isaiah prophesy about you
hypocrites, as it is written:
This people honors 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.+++