Loving the Lord with Pure Hearts, Fifth Wednesday (I), February 11, 2015

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bernadette Parish, Fall River, MA
Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of Prayer for the Sick
February 11, 2015
Gen 2:4-9.15-17, Ps 104, Mk 7:14-23

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• In the Gospel today Jesus asks the disciples, “Are even you likewise without understanding?” Lest we fail to understand the absolutely revolutionary point Jesus is making in today’s Gospel, let’s take some time to do what he asks, “Hear me, all of you, and understand.”
• Jesus was continuing his conversation with the Scribes and the Pharisees after their criticism that Jesus’ disciples ate their meals with ritually unwashed hands. The Scribes had determined that in order for someone to be pleasing to God they needed to obsess about ritual impurity, washing their hands twice with one-and-a-half egg shells full of water, and watching pots, jugs, beds, themselves and any other thing that had touched Gentiles or things not consecrated to the Lord. Jesus yesterday called them hypocrites because the word hypocrite means actor and they were just pretending to be faithful to God, substituting human precepts for God’s word and will. Today Jesus extended the conversation to something that would have astonished the disciples, something that would have been totally revolutionary. He said, “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” This point was revolutionary because it was precisely the things from the outside that the Jews of the day thought would defile them. We remember that Judas Maccabeus and so many of his heroic contemporaries were willing to lay down their lives on the battlefield because the Greeks, 150 years before Christ, were trying to force the Jews to eat pork. They refused. Many people were martyred. Many Jews today still refuse to eat meat unless it’s kosher, unless all the blood has dripped out. Jesus was saying that the food we eat ultimately can’t make us impure before God. In doing this, St. Mark comments, “Thus he declared all foods clean,” something that would take even the disciples a long time to come to grips with — St. Peter, for example, needed a vision in Joppa to help him to recognize that Jesus was not asking that Jews follow the scribal dietary laws.
• What can make us impure before God? Jesus says it’s “the things that come out from within,” and then he defines them, “Evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.” It’s from the tree of the heart that either good fruit or bad fruit comes. God wants us not to have “hearts far from” him, but hearts that are fully united to him. The type of purity he cares about is a pure heart that leads to pure hands, to pure speech, to pure vision, to thoughts, words and deeds of pure love.
• In the first reading, we see the beginning of an illustration of what happens when one’s heart is not purely united to the Lord. We see where sin comes from. In the account of our beginnings in the Book of Genesis, we see that God placed Adam in the garden and gave everything over to him, to cultivate and care for God’s creation. He gave him only one restriction: “You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.” God didn’t place the tree there as bait to trip Adam up. He didn’t create it as a temptation. The tree symbolized good and evil. To eat of its fruit meant to eat of evil, knowing that we became what we ate. Everything else in the garden, we know, was created “good” and the human being was created “very good.” This tree was a primordial sacrament of evil. God, in giving this restriction, was reminding Adam to desire what was good and do it. But as we’ll see later in the week in the account of the Fall, Adam and Eve couldn’t resist the allure of the fruit of the Tree of communion with good and evil. Genesis will tell us that they “saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes and desirable for gaining wisdom.” They started to covet from the heart. That happened after they began to distrust God at the word of the Serpent who convinced them that God was a liar in telling them eating of its forbidden fruit would prove fatal. “You certainly will not die!,” the serpent exclaimed. “No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.” God had created us in his image and likeness and desired us to be like God, but according to God’s wisdom rather than according to evil desire. But Eve and Adam took the bait to pretend that evil was good and sinned. It came from their heart. They were defiled before they even took the first bite. Jesus’ whole mission was to heal our heart, to take away the hearts that had become stony through sin and restore a heart that was pure, a heart that trusted God, a heart that said yes, a heart that treasured God’s word and sought to conform itself to God’s infinite goodness.
• These considerations bring us to three considerations. The first is about Our Lady. Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes because it was on this date, 157 years ago, that the Blessed Mother appeared in the grotto of Massabielle to our patroness, St. Bernadette. Mary’s heart is the model for our hearts. Her heart was pure because her heart was full of God. She sought to form St. Bernadette to have a heart pleasing to God and through St. Bernadette she seeks to do that for all of us.
• The second consideration is what Catholics pray for in a special way on this day. It’s the World Day of Prayer for the Sick, which the Church has long observed on this day because praying for the sick — and petitioning God for miracles through the intercession of our Lady — is such a notable characteristic of the sanctuary of Lourdes, where malades are brought from throughout the world and many stupendous miracles have taken place. Today, however, we’re called to focus on the greatest sickness of all, the worst malady. It’s not that which attacks the body, but that which comes from the heart. In Lourdes, Mary called St. Bernadette and through her all of us to prayer, especially for the conversion of sinners, for the repentance of those who were pigging out on the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Physical pain itself cannot ultimately harm us — in fact, in may help us to become more dependent on God and more open to the love of others — but it’s the self-inflicted pain of sin that can really hurt us. Today is a day not just to pray for those with physical illnesses but for spiritual illnesses as well.
• The last application is to the pilgrimage to Italy we’re beginning today at this very early hour of the morning. It’s key for us to capture this distinction that Christ makes between the body and the heart, between the outside and the inside, in the Gospel. Our bodies are certainly going on pilgrimage. For many of us our bodies won’t allow us during these next eleven days to forget that we’re on pilgrimage, because we’ll be feeling it as we ascend the hills of Assisi and speed on the cobblestone streets of Rome. But what’s far more important than the physical dimension of this pilgrimage is what is meant to happen on the inside. God wants us to go on an interior pilgrimage, an exodus, a Passover, from where we are now to where he’s been waiting, from before he created Adam and Eve, to meet us and lead us as a result of this spiritual journey we’re commencing. It’s a time for us to examine our hearts, to see whether they’re far from God and close. Regardless of where they are right now, God wants to help us draw closer to him during these days. It’s a time for us to allow the Lord to heal whatever parts of our heart that might give rise to evil, lustful, greedy, malicious, deceitful, envious, arrogant, and foolish thoughts, the types of thoughts that lead to deeds. It’s a time for us to thank God for all the goodness he has given and to enter into communion with the Good who is goodness incarnate, rather than to enter into communion with evil. Let’s pray for each other, let’s help each other, let’s allow the Lord to help all of us, to make this pilgrimage fundamentally in our hearts before we make it with our feet.
• The evil that began with coveting from the heart the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was redeemed by the new Tree of Life, which was planted on Calvary in the Cross. And now we’re prepared to receive the fruit of that life-giving tree: Jesus’ own body, blood, soul and divinity. As we prepare to consume him within, let us remember that this gesture is not just a physical act, because the mere physical reception of holy communion itself cannot sanctify us. We’ll focus tomorrow in Orvieto on St. Thomas Aquinas’ words that both good and bad receive Jesus, the first group to their good, the second to doom. What sanctifies us is whether we genuinely receive Holy Communion not in our mouths but in our heart. Today we thank the Lord for giving the grace to hear what he says with understanding. Let us receive him today in our heart so that from that heart may proceed deeds like those that emanated from Our Lady of Lourdes’ heart to the praise and glory of God the Father and for the sanctification of the world.

The readings for today’s Mass were: