Sunday September 1, 2024
22nd Sunday of Year B

1st reading: Deuteronomy 4,1-2.6-8
Psaume : 14 (15),2-3a,3bc-4ab,4d-5
2rd reading: James 1,17-18.21b-22.27
Gospel: Mark 7,1-8.14-15.21-23

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After five weeks of reading chapter 6 of St. John, we find ourselves back in the Gospel of St. Mark, and we must place this passage from chapter 7—these few verses picked out of chapter 7—in its context. We are in the middle of what is called the “section of the loaves.” There are two multiplications of the loaves in St. Matthew as in St. Mark: the first in Jewish territory west of the Sea of ​​Galilee, and the second in pagan territory to the east. And between these two multiplications of the loaves—each of which includes specific vocabulary that underscores this distribution—the question of pagan access to the Eucharist is addressed, and thus the whole question of ritual purity.

In the passage we have heard, it is specified to us - an indication specific to Mark - that these are Pharisees and scribes who come from Jerusalem. Now we are in Galilee. We are therefore dealing with, one could say, a sect (the Pharisees are like a Jewish sect, without a negative connotation in this word), with people very zealous for the law and who come to spread their way of doing things among the children of Israel of the North. 

And Jesus, if you will allow me the expression, is going to send them back to their goal. Why? The difficulty we men face is that when we want to do what pleases God, as God does not intervene immediately to tell us if it is very good or if it is not good, we tend to appropriate things and to organize our relationship with God to our measure, for our own satisfaction, to be happy with what we do thinking that God too will be happy. This is the proper approach of the religious man. It is the temptation of every religious man, whatever his path. Now precisely, it is going to be a question of discovering that the true way to please God is to let God do it for us. The true way to please God is to welcome what he accomplishes among us as beneficiaries who cannot give back. Well, the passages of the Gospel make us aware that we are in debt, that this debt is forgiven us graciously, and that the only thing we have to do is say thank you. But we would like not to be in debt… We would like to be “quit” with God. When Saint Therese is going to offer herself to merciful love, is going to become “victim of the holocaust of merciful love” — an incomprehensible formula! — what she realizes, what she experiences, is precisely to arrive in Heaven “empty-handed,” as she will say in the same prayer; that is, she accepts being completely in debt and to rejoice in this, to accept that God’s mercy is precisely the forgiveness of debt. But when I understand this, then the desire that dwells in my heart is not only to say thank you, but it is to live this thank you and to live this thank you by pleasing God. Not to deserve the grace that is given to me, but to signify that I have understood what grace is given to me, to signify the gratitude that dwells in my heart, the recognition that is in my heart. 

This is why the Word of God comes first. The Word of God which is first of all Creation, which is the great Word that every man can see, contemplate and by which every man lives, often without knowing it. And then the Word of God as the people of Israel receive it, shape it and transmit it to us, and as the Church — receiving the Holy Scriptures of the first Covenant from the hands of the people of Israel and adding the works of the Lord in what we call the “New Testament” — transmits to us through these Holy Scriptures, the Word of God. We heard this Word from Saint James, he invites us to welcome it with gentleness: “Receive with gentleness the Word sown in you; it is this which can save your souls”. And this echoes what we heard in the first reading in the Book of Deuteronomy: “Now, Israel, listen to the statutes and the ordinances that I teach you, so that you may do them. So you will live and go in to possess the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.” And a little further: “You shall keep them and put them into practice; they shall be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of all peoples.”. Our attitude towards the Holy Scriptures is to welcome the wisdom and intelligence that they transmit to us; it is not to judge them with our wisdom and our human intelligence, but on the contrary to let ourselves be enlightened. The Gospel therefore points out, I come back to what I said at the beginning, the question of purity. This question is not anecdotal, it is an important question, since this purity in question, ultimately, reflects our availability to the work of God. Now this purity, we cannot produce it. And the risk, if we want to produce it - this is precisely what the Pharisees experienced - is to remain on the outside, to want, by attitudes that are not bad in themselves, to change our own heart. Now, these external attitudes cannot change our heart. On the other hand, changing our heart can change our external attitudes. Now this change of our hearts, we remember, is promised by the gift of the Holy Spirit: “I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and make that you walk in my statutes, that you keep my precepts and be obedient to them faithful. You will live in the land that I gave to your fathers: you will be my people, and I will be your God."(Ez 36,26-28). We must therefore welcome this purity. And Jesus tells us: it is not external things that can make us impure, it is our heart that makes us impure, "It is from within, from the heart of man, that evil thoughts come.". And here we have a whole list that we read daily in our newspapers. 

The Word of God, by dint of entering into us, by dint of illuminating our intelligence, and through our meditation, gradually comes to purify our heart. But this Word is extended, one could say, in the sacraments of the Church which are nothing other than the active Word of God. In the Eucharistic liturgy, in the liturgy of the Word, we welcome a living word, proclaimed today in the lives of men through the liturgy. This word reaches us through our ears, and penetrates our heart and our intelligence, to enlighten us and to change us. And in the Eucharistic liturgy, this same Word comes to make present the redemptive sacrifice of Christ and through Eucharistic communion, comes to give us the grace to be able to live what we have heard in the liturgy of the Word. 

Hence the importance - I say this all the more freely since you were all on time - of being present at the entire Eucharistic celebration and of receiving with our ears the Word of God that is proclaimed, in order to then be able to receive through the Eucharistic mystery the grace of living this word. But if I receive the grace of living a word that I have not heard, well, as the other would say, "it works much less well"... 

To conclude, I would just like to give the floor back to Thérèse for a few moments, so that we may be encouraged to take time to meditate on the Word of God, to read the Holy Scriptures, to let ourselves not only be taught, but purified from within by this Word. You know this, you have already heard it in manuscript A, towards the end, where Thérèse writes: 

How much light have I not drawn from the works of our Father Saint John of the Cross!… At the age of 17-18 I had no other spiritual nourishment, but later all the books left me in aridity and I am still in this state… […] In this helplessness, Holy Scripture and the Imitation [of Jesus Christ] come to my aid. In them I find solid and pure nourishment. But above all it is the Gospel that sustains me in my prayers; in it I find all that is necessary for me. I always discover new lights, hidden and mysterious meanings… Ms A 83 r°

And then in a letter to Céline, letter 165:

Often we descend into the fertile valleys where our heart loves to be nourished, the vast field of the Scriptures which so often has opened to spread its rich treasures in our favor... 

And a little further:

Jesus said: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Keeping the Word of Jesus is the only condition of our happiness, the proof of our love for Him. But what is this word? It seems to me that the Word of Jesus is Himself, Him Jesus, the Word, the Word of God! […] We possess the Truth! We keep Jesus in our hearts!

Amen