Word to the Wise
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 - Tuesday in the 18th Week in Ordinary Time
[Num 12:1-13 and Matt 14:22-36 or, in Year A, Matt 15:1-2, 10-14,1032]Hear and understand. It is not what enters one's mouth that defiles the person; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one."
"Did you wash your hands?" I'm sure many of us will recall that being said to us as children when we answered the call to a meal! I'm sure many of us who are parents have said the same thing! Furthermore, we see signs everywhere now about hand washing as a way of preventing the spread of harmful diseases! In short, the purpose for this hand washing is hygienic! The hand washing at issue in today's gospel is concerned with the possibility that a person may have touched something classified as ritually "unclean" before coming to table. This "impurity" would be transferred to the meal at the table and then to the person eating that food! This obligation was certainly required for the temple priests, but its binding force for others was debated in Jesus' time, even if the Pharisees were convinced of its legal necessity!
The context of the dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew is important. The audience for which the gospel was written had many devout Jewish people who had accepted Christ, but who also felt bound by the Mosaic Law, the Torah. Jesus takes the position in this gospel that "impurity" is not caused by external material things but by internal moral things. [The Gospel of Mark shows him going further and declaring "all foods clean."] Eventually, in the Acts of the Apostles, we learn of the struggle between the Jerusalem ministry and the Gentile ministry over this subject. Ultimately, the dietary laws for Christians disappeared as a requirement of faith, to be replaced by fasting laws which almost attained the same force! Many of us will remember that "fish on Friday" was an identifying characteristic of Catholic faith!! Many people simply followed that practice as a matter of identity rather than for a spiritual purpose such as the collective witness to Jesus' crucifixion and death on a Friday! In Jesus' view, external practices had to be indicative of internal faith (as the prophets in the Old Testament continually preached). The incident in today's gospel has a significance for today! AMEN