What Comes From What The Heart Consumes, Fifth Wednesday in Ordinary Time (I), February 10, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of Saint Scholastica
February 10, 2021
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 washing 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, frankly, 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 things from the outside that the Jews of Jesus’ day thought would make them impure. 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, “He thus declared all foods clean.” This is 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 does 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. And where a person’s treasure is, there will the heart be. Does the heart treasure God and the things of God or does it desire evil? 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 become what we eat. Everything else in the garden, we know, was created “good” and the human being was created “very good.” God, in giving this restriction, was reminding Adam to desire what was good and do it. But as we’ll see on Friday 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 Him, but according to God’s wisdom rather than according to evil desire. But Eve and Adam took the bait that pretended that evil was good and sinned. It came from their heart. They were defiled before they even took the first bite. It wasn’t the physical act of masticating a piece of forbidden fruit that ruptured their relationship with God, with each other and within themselves, but their heart’s desire to obtain what the serpent mendaciously promised they would receive through that consumption. Jesus’ whole mission was to heal our heart, to take away the hearts that  become stony through sin and restore a heart that is pure, a heart that trusts God, a heart that says yes, a heart that treasures God’s word and seeks to conform itself to God’s infinite goodness. Regardless of where our heart is right now, God wants to help us draw closer to him, to allow him to heal whatever parts of our heart that might give rise to evil, lustful, greedy, malicious, deceitful, envious, arrogant, and foolish thoughts and deeds, and to thank Him for all the goodness he has given and to enter into communion, not with evil, but with the God who is goodness incarnate.
• Someone with the type of good heart that desires what God desires, that places its treasure in God and in the things of God, beat firmly within the breast of Saint Scholastica, who died on this day in 542. She is most famous not so much as a foundress of female religious life, but for a scene memorialized by Saint Gregory the Great that showed her trust in God, the power of intercessory prayer, and a faith and fraternal charity that, it seems, were even greater than that of her famous twin brother, Saint Benedict, one of the greatest saints of all time, the founder of western monasticism and patron of Europe. Because we know very little about her life, this anecdote — taken from what would turn out to be one of her last days — is the best means to help us to get to know her and her saintly heart. St. Benedict would come to visit her only once a year even though she lived close by. He was so focused on his ora et labora, his prayer and work, that loving his sister and allowing God to lead each of them more to him through their spiritual friendship took a back seat. It was never enough for St. Scholastica’s desire for communion. Once when Benedict wanted to cut it short, Scholastica turned to God for the communion to be continued. It’s one of the most beautiful stories in hagiography. I quote from Saint Gregory the Great’s account: “Scholastica, the sister of Saint Benedict, had been consecrated to God from her earliest years. She was accustomed to visiting her brother once a year. He would come down to meet her at a place on the monastery property, not far outside the gate. One day she came as usual and her saintly brother went with some of his disciples; they spent the whole day praising God and talking of sacred things. As night fell they had supper together. Their spiritual conversation went on and the hour grew late. The holy nun said to her brother: ‘Please do not leave me tonight; let us go on until morning talking about the delights of the spiritual life.’ ‘Sister,’ he replied, ‘what are you saying? I simply cannot stay outside my cell.’ When she heard her brother refuse her request, the holy woman joined her hands on the table, laid her head on them and began to pray. As she raised her head from the table, there were such brilliant flashes of lightning, such great peals of thunder and such a heavy downpour of rain that neither Benedict nor his brethren could stir across the threshold of the place where they had been seated. Sadly he began to complain: ‘May God forgive you, sister. What have you done?’ ‘Well,’ she answered, ‘I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me and return to your monastery.’ Reluctant as he was to stay of his own will, he remained against his will. So it came about that they stayed awake the whole night, engrossed in their conversation about the spiritual life. … Three days later, Benedict was in his cell. Looking up to the sky, he saw his sister’s soul leave her body in the form of a dove, and fly up to the secret places of heaven. Rejoicing in her great glory, he thanked almighty God with hymns and words of praise. He then sent his brethren to bring her body to the monastery and lay it in the tomb he had prepared for himself.” We see here how love for God is not inconsistent with fraternal love, but is actually a means by which it can be expressed. Saint Scholastica in this case better desired what God wanted and her heart became a scholastic academy not only for her twin brother and his religious brothers but for the entire Church. We seek a prayerful, pure, bold, loving heart like hers. If faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains, as Jesus says, it can also solicit torrential thunderstorms!
• 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. We’re prepare now to receive the fruit of that life-giving tree: Jesus’ own body, blood, soul and divinity. Let us remember that this gesture is not just a physical act, because the mere physical reception of holy communion itself alone cannot sanctify us. What sanctifies us is whether we genuinely desire this gift, that we love the One who gives himself, that we receive Holy Communion not just 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 Saint Scholastica to the praise and glory of God the Father and for the sanctification of the world.

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