Homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Ritual Practices Must Lead To Encounter

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, September 1, 2024

In all religions, observing the norms of purification play a crucial role: first, they give us a sense of the holiness of God. Secondly, they shine a spotlight on our darkness from which we must be set free if we are to be able to approach God. In Judaism at the time of Jesus, observing the laws of purification dominated the entire life of Jewish people. But in today’s Gospel (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23), we see Jesus challenging this idea of obtaining religious purity through ritual actions. The main issue is: before God, what makes a person pure? Is it the washing of hands before eating? Is it the purification of oneself after returning from the marketplace? Is it the purification of cups and jugs and kettles and beds? Does purity come from ritual activities? For Jesus, it is not ritual actions that make us pure. For Jesus, purity and impurity come from within a person’s heart and depend on the condition of the person’s heart. My late mother, she is a saint, was fond of saying after opening her hands and showing them to her listeners, “Just because I washed my hands properly with soap and water does not mean my hands are clean.” Another thought provoking comment she used to say during her earthly life was, “Having a good bath does not mean you are clean.” These words of my late mother can help us understand our Gospel passage for this weekend.

But how does the heart become pure? In the Beatitude, Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Who is the pure in heart who can see God? Liberal theology says that Jesus has replaced obtaining purity through ritual acts with morality. So, in place of the washing of hands before eating etc. we now have morality. But the problem with this view is that it reduces Christianity to be essentially about morality, about being good and avoiding evil. But Christianity is much more than that. Christianity is not primarily about ethics and morality, about “being a nice person” or “having a heart of gold.” If the ultimate goal of Christianity is to make us morally better people, then why evangelize? I tell you, if you go round the world, you will meet people who are not Christians nevertheless, they are very good people, and they live an ethically upright life. Now, should a Christian live an upright life? Yes indeed! But is that what Christianity and Christian living is primarily about? Not at all! Christianity is about forming a relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s about walking in his footsteps. It’s about surrendering to his lordship. It’s about making Jesus Christ the fundamental organizing principle of your life. The amazing thing about Christianity is that it is not a set of ideas. It is not merely observing rules and norms. Deep down, Christianity is a relationship with someone, a person— who is both human and divine, and who has a voice. If we listen to his voice at all times, we will never go astray. 

In place of ritual purity, what we now have is not merely morality and a collection of laws, rather the gift of encounter with God in Jesus Christ. After his lengthy teaching on the sacramentality of his Body and Blood in John 6, we hear what I consider as one of the saddest lines in the New Testament, “As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him” (John 6:66). Then in one of the most dramatic and frightening moments in the New Testament, Jesus turns to the Twelve Apostles and asks them, “Do you also want to leave?” (John 6:67). Christianity is about declaring, stating and insisting over and over again Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-70). Every religious ritual and practice must lead to an encounter with God. All Catholic rituals like the sacraments, attending Mass on Sunday and holy day of obligation, praying the rosary, lighting candles before the icon of the Mother of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Guadalupe, blessing yourself with holy water, bowing and genuflecting before the Blessed Sacrament, the altar etc. must lead us to real encounter with the one who is present in all the sacraments and whose power is infused in all the icons. If they don’t, then we are like the Pharisees who honor God with their lips, but their hearts are far away from him. 

May God give you peace!