Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Real Works

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 02/08/22 | Aux. Bishop R. Barron

[MurphsLaw]

FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

MARK 7:1-13

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who have 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.
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 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 have come only to do the will of the one who sent me.” “My food is to do the will of my heavenly Father.”

[MurphsLaw]

+++ When the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from
Jerusalem gathered around Jesus,
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 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 went on to say,
“How well you have set aside the commandment of God
in order to uphold your tradition!
For Moses said,
Honor your father and your mother,
and Whoever curses father or mother shall die.
Yet you say,
‘If someone says to father or mother,
“Any support you might have had from me is qorban”’
(meaning, dedicated to God),
you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother.
You nullify the word of God
in favor of your tradition that you have handed on.
And you do many such things.” +++

[Don Corleone]

The Hebrew language as spoken in those days had very few words, less than perhaps 10000.(English today has a couple of million) One word stood for several meanings like our to,too and two. Depended on the context and thought. Translations were and are very difficult.

[ebb tide]

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who have imposed their interpretation of the Law on the Israelites.

And in today's Church, Bergoglio exposes the hypocrisy of his and his fellow modernists' heresies and who have imposed their interpretation of a perverted "faith" on Catholics.