Daily Gospel Reflection - Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 29, 2021
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Mc 7:1-8a, 14-15, 21-23
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 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.
“From within people, from their hearts,
come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.
All these evils come from within and they defile.”
Source: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Bishop Robert Barron
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."
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