Friars Corner: The joy of Biblical study
Fr. Bob Hilz, TOR
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; Psalms 15:2-5; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
This weekend we shift gears as it were. Nationally, we celebrate Labor Day. Have a good and safe celebration. We also celebrate the life of a great American Patriot, Senator John McCain.
With our Sunday Eucharistic Liturgy, we shift gears from our 5-week look at Jesus as our “bread of life, come down from heaven” in Christ’s ongoing presence in the Eucharist.
This is a major part of our Catholic belief. With all the difficulties with clerical abuse, let us remember and repeat the question that Jesus asked the apostles in last Sunday’s gospel, “Will you also leave me?’ Let us respond with Peter with great enthusiasm,
Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God, John 6:68-9.
Don’t leave the Catholic Church. If necessary, find a good priest and faith community. Most of my audience is on the internet through JOYAlive.net. I won’t know you until we meet in heaven. So my writing is a few general points. One is to get “The New Testament,” St. Joseph, New Catholic RED LETTER Version. You can get it through Amazon or www.catholicbookpublishing.com, 2015. Second, is to get a current short Lives of the Saints. You can see a short history of the men and women who have built up the church with God’s gifts.
The parish priest
One of the main responsibilities of a parish priest is to be “father” of the whole community, his family for a while. It is not a lifetime position. In prayerful reflection, he must see the theme of the four Sunday readings. Three readings follow the same theme and usually, the second reading follows another theme to allow some flexibility. Then it is greatly helpful to read the introduction to the gospels and have some idea of who the author was and to whom and when did he write his story about Jesus. The Lives of the Saints does give you some more information. Two of the gospel writers were apostles and the other two were disciple evangelists. The earliest leaders began to leave Jerusalem after Pentecost about 36/7, only 3 years after Jesus’ death. St. Matthew tells us at the end of his gospel that Jesus told them that,
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the world, 28:18-20.
God’s directives, unedited
I have found reading the introduction of each of the gospels, the lives of the saints who wrote them and the descriptive footnotes at the bottom of a particular passage, very enlightening and exciting. We can ask ourselves, “What gifts has God given to me to spread his good news to others?” Given this background, we need to make a great adjustment to Jesus’ remarks in Mark’s story today to the Jewish Pharisees as the challenge about God’s original directives to them and their adding a lot of their own human directives. We need some laws or life is chaos yet too many are restrictive. Jesus’ followers were accused of not washing their hands before eating. I was trained by my parents to do the same, not in a law biding directive but from a cleanliness perspective.
Jesus then made a comment about washing things that come from the market. Our cultural concern for becoming sick is for different reasons. Farmers are producing crops in mass amounts to feed masses of people. They use fertilizers mixed with poisons to help control all kinds of bugs in the large fields. They also spray many fruits and vegetables with modern pesticides. Those elements need to be washed, some with special care, to prevent sickness. There is also the concern for the preservatives added to dried fruits shipped at great distances. We need health guidelines.
Cleanliness inside out
Jesus made the comment in this 7th chapter about nothing from outside can make a person unclean but it is what comes from within a person’s heart (inside) that makes them unclean. That has to have a great adjustment. Is the learning process today much greater than in Jesus’ day? It certainly is. Children learn first at home from the parents how to speak, act and behave. Later they learn in public and private schools. Some of our sexual behavior comes naturally from the way God programmed our brains. Bad sexual behavior in Greek and Roman times was very bad when wrestling and gladiator training was done by men in the nude. The frescoes on the walls of brothels then are very revealing about their understanding of sexual practice.
If we look around today, most deviant sexual practice comes from outside through music, movies and TV shows, magazines, DVD, pornography and other electronic devices all around us. It comes into us through the deviant expressions of others through personal sexual abuse of others or mass media of which satan and his armies are the root cause. These become addictions like many others.
The Armor of God
We need to put on the full armor of God that St. Paul spoke about in Ephesians 6:11ff,
Put on the armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the deceit of the devil. For we are not struggling against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, the powers, and the cosmic rulers of this present darkness, and against the spirits of evil in the heavens. Therefore, put on the armor of God, so that you will be able to hold fast on the evil day and to hold your ground with all your strength.
Paul adds a list of armor pieces, which most of us don’t think of putting on unless we are police or military men and women. I think of these as clothing we need to protect ourselves from the demonic forces that are trying to remove God and his kingdom from our culture.
How to put on the Armor of God
Some of us shower before we go out to work in the morning. In a physical and spiritual sense, we clean up by also asking God to forgive our sins. Then we begin to put on our daily under clothes, a shirt, bra and blouse and underpants. Then we put on our outer clothes, a shirt of chastity and pants or a skirt of purity. Then the Belt of God’s Truth has something to hold up. If not, our private parts are exposed and we may end up in jail. We add our bulletproof vest, Vest of Righteousness (good deeds). We put on our Shoes for Zeal to Spread the Good News of God’s kingdom and the Hat of Salvation, which Jesus won for us by his death on the cross. Before going out the door we take up our Shield of Faith that will help put out the darts of the evil ones. We will get shot at. The last article is our only aggressive weapon, the Sword of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God.
Now you should be more equipped to engage in the war between God and the devils, a war between goodness and Christ’s light and the kingdom of darkness. Have a blessed week with God’s peace, joy and light surrounding you.
(© 2018 Fr. Bob Hilz, TOR)
