22th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle B) – August 30, 2009

Scripture Readings
First Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8
Second James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27
Gospel Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Prepared by: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• The grace of observing the Commandments
• The saving power of the Word of God
• Self-righteousness vs. justification via sacra doctrina

2. Exegetical Notes
• “Hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe, that you may live….
Thus you will give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations:” “These key
terms [‘statutes and decrees’]…are further defined in v. 8 as constituting ‘Torah.’ Clearly it
includes laws, but much else besides. It offered a categorical rule of life. It carried an all-
sufficient authority. It contained a wisdom that established the goals and guidelines for all
human living. Here, as repeatedly in the book, we encounter a strong emphasis on the
various psychological aspects relating to religious loyalty and spiritual sincerity. So there are
repeated exhortations concerning the commandments to ‘watch…do not forget…nor let them
slip from your mind.’ This is combined with a strong emphasis on the inner psychological
dimension of obedience. The people must not ‘become complacent’ or’ act corruptly’ (i.e., be
guilty of self-delusion.” (The New Interpreter’s Bible)
• “The Father willed to give us birth by the word of truth. Humbly welcome the word…that…is
able to save your souls:” “James indicates that ‘[God] gave us birth’—not merely human
beings, “us,” meaning evidently that we Christians are ‘brought forth’ by the specific ‘word of
truth’ (i.e., the Gospel) when God so willed.” (The International Bible Commentary)
• “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts…. All these evils come from within
and they defile:” “More important is the demonstration of Jesus’ christological authority as the
Son of God to pronounce not only the illegitimacy of the Pharisaic traditions but, more
important, even the termination of certain commandments found in Scripture itself. He can do
what the elders in practice did by their traditions: abrogate parts of the Old Testament. Mark’s
Jesus is the Son of God and thus is able to terminate the cultic rules of Scripture concerning
 clean versus unclean that have served their purpose but are now superseded by the greater
freedom of the new covenant, which enables one to concentrate more fully on what comes
out of the heart.” (Robert H. Stein)

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• 2054 Jesus acknowledged the Ten Commandments, but he also showed the power of the
Spirit at work in their letter. He preached a "righteousness [which] exceeds that of the scribes
and Pharisees" as well as that of the Gentiles. He unfolded all the demands of the
Commandments.
• 2062 The Commandments properly so-called come in the second place: they express the
implications of belonging to God through the establishment of the covenant. Moral existence
is a response to the Lord's loving initiative. It is the acknowledgement and homage given to
God and a worship of thanksgiving. It is cooperation with the plan God pursues in history.
• 2072 The Ten Commandments are engraved by God in the human heart.
• 108 Still, the Christian faith is not a "religion of the book." Christianity is the religion of the
"Word" of God, a word which is "not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate
and living."
• 112 Be especially attentive "to the content and unity of the whole Scripture". Different as the
books which compose it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God's plan, of
which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover. “The phrase ‘heart of
Christ’ can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known his heart.” (St. Thomas Aquinas).
• 124 "The Word of God, which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, is
set forth and displays its power in a most wonderful way in the writings of the New
Testament" which hand on the ultimate truth of God's Revelation. Their central object is
Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Son: his acts, teachings, Passion and glorification, and his
Church's beginnings under the Spirit's guidance.
• 1990 Justification detaches man from sin which contradicts the love of God, and purifies his
heart of sin. Justification follows upon God's merciful initiative of offering forgiveness. It
reconciles man with God. It frees from the enslavement to sin, and it heals.
• 1991 Justification is at the same time the acceptance of God's righteousness through faith in
Jesus Christ. Righteousness (or "justice") here means the rectitude of divine love. With
justification, faith, hope, and charity are poured into our hearts, and obedience to the divine
will is granted us.
• 1993 Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On
man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to
conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who
precedes and preserves his assent.
• 2517 The heart is the seat of moral personality: "Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder,
adultery, fornication. . . . " The struggle against carnal covetousness entails purifying the
heart and practicing temperance: “Remain simple and innocent, and you will be like little
children who do not know the evil that destroys man's life.”
4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities
• “…teaching as doctrines human precepts” – St. Thomas Aquinas: “Deuteronomy says early
on, before setting down the ten commandments, ‘This is our wisdom and understanding in
the presence of the people’ (Dt 4:60.… Sacra doctrina should be declared to be wisdom
highest above all human wisdom, not indeed in some special department but
unconditionally…. That person, therefore, who considers maturely and without qualification
the first and final cause of the entire universe, namely God, is to be called supremely wise….
Consequently, sacra doctrina is called wisdom in the highest degree…. What is peculiar to
this science’s knowledge is that it is about truth which comes through revelation, not through
natural reasoning.(ST I.6)
• St. Irenaeus: “By their transgression the Pharisees not only falsified God’s law, but they also
set against it their own law, called to this day the Pharisaic law. In this their rabbis suppress
some of the commandments, add new ones, and give others their own interpretation, thus
making the law serve their own purposes.”
• St. Irenaeus: “The Pharisees found no fault with themselves for lacking the essence of the
law, which is love for God.”
• Fr. Thomas Gilby, O.P.: “Sacra doctrina [is] an imparting of God’s mystery to human beings
which is a communicating of his life, not merely the conveying of information…. The effect of
sacra doctrina is not an encrustation of artificial forms, but an invigoration of the mind’s own
proper vitality, contemplative and active…shaping human activity in the bustle of temporal
affairs…. Doctrina has an active sense…. St. Thomas…observ[es] that the motion between
giver and receiver, teacher and learner, is really one…. What is principal [is] the personal
encounter of human beings with the living God in Christ through his teaching Church…. To
the extent that sacra doctrina when translated among men keeps the freshness of its original
communication, they you will expect of it a rhythm not mechanized into a rote, a manner
neither heavily didactic nor ingratiating, neither bullying nor deferential, neither sectarian nor
latitudinarian; you will expect urgency yet patience with the eternal, sense and sensibility, the
classical and the romantic, reason and mystery, the peculiar and the common, the racy and
the sublime…; in short, something not narrower but a great deal wider than humanity. The
result will be not just a formal system of doctrine studded with bits of information not a
catalogue of precepts, but richer in interest and more ‘embodied.’ Such, in fact, is God’s story
of his ways with man, which is not addressed to the mind alone, to be inspected piece by
piece for acceptance here and rejection there, but given to the whole of man to be taken
entire and embraced in sympathy…. The saving power of sacra doctrina is the Gospel Law
shed on us by the Spirit and springing from our inmost heart; by this, and not by conformity to
a text-book, are men made right, justificari, and by coming to the Son because they are
drawn by the Father are they taught by God, docibiles Dei…. Sacra doctrina represents…all
knowledge taught us by God’s grace…. Sacra doctrina is centered on God himself.”
• Ven. John Henry Newman: “Our Savior objected to the making too much of such an
observance; to thinking it would make up for sins of the heart. This is what Jesus
condemned, the show of great attention to outward things, while inward things, which were
more important, were neglected.
• Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar: “Even though Israel is a small and politically insignificant nation,
the ‘great nations’ cannot avoid recognizing the law given by God as more than other human
legislation, and the nation that lives according to God’s law as ‘wiser and more intelligent’ (in
 divine things) than other nations…. God’s Word is no longer merely spoken as instruction for
us; rather, it is now ‘rooted in the heart.’ Having become so much internalized, more than
ever it must not only be ‘heard’ but acted out, in order that the living Word of the Father might
truly bear divine fruit worthy of God. Jesus in our hearts is a fulfillment of the law’s guidance,
and this fulfillment certainly extends far beyond Old Testament faithfulness to the law. For the
word spoken to us outside has now become inwardly rooted Word…. An evil is all the more
evil when it comes out of a heart in which God’s living, incarnate Word has taken root as
law.”
• Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P.: “For Christians, the person of Jesus has become the center of
the moral life…. Catholic moral teaching is not a mere code of prescriptions and prohibitions.
It is not something that the Church teaches merely to keep people obedient, doing violence
to their freedom. Rather, Catholic morality is a response to the aspirations of the human
heart for truth and goodness…. [Thus we offer] the model for another type of morality [in
which] the notion of freedom for excellence shows us the way to respond and offers us the
promise of renewal. The key to renewal is to rediscover our spiritual nature in its
spontaneous yearning for truth, goodness, and happiness, flowing from a single primal
dynamism…. It is part of the very constitution of our personality…. By excluding this desire
from morality, we have deformed it and painted a false picture of it, because the desire for
happiness is itself a spark of the divine image within us.”
• Msgr. Luigi Giussani: “Reason, once it realize that God is the source of everything, that the
Mystery lies at the origin of everything, is also keen to discover the paths that lead on to the
moral laws, the paths that lead on to how we should treat God, how to behave towards God.
In other words, once it becomes aware of what God is, of the fact that he is, is keen to
discover the itineraries of the human…. We live for an Other, and our every action must
tend—this is the dynamic of morality—toward the plan of an Other…. Morality is born as a
prevalent, irresistible liking for a person who is present: Jesus…. Man’s morality is born,
then, as friendship with God as Mystery and therefore with Jesus. Therefore, morality for a
Christian is loving adherence…. To say that morality is a state of tension means that we are
in a position that is continually directed toward something that is Other.”
• Msgr. Luigi Giussani: “Morality is ‘running a race, as Saint Paul says in the letter to the
Philippians; it is a tension (from teina, meaning reaching out, tending). I can go wrong a
thousand times a day, but a thousand times a day I start again. A life that never yields. And
it’s not a matter of character, but rather of truth in mind and heart. In other words setting
aside all ambiguity that would suggest one needs a rare intelligence or an exceptional heart;
it is something simple: ‘I thank you Father, because you have revealed these things not to
those who think they are wise, but to the simple.’ On the mount of the beatitudes Jesus starts
off by saying, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’ It is poverty of spirit that clarifies the mind and
disposes the heart, taking away all the deceit and falsehood, leaving intact our weaknesses,
so that we can express the cry, ‘I love you God, my strength.’ ‘You are my strength’ is the
supreme expression of our humanity. We live for an Other.”
• Fr. Julian Carron: “The Mystery comes to meet us, and we deny it continually. This is our
immorality…. Morality begins from the fact that you realize that you can’t say anything except
‘Yes, I love you, I am with you, I understand that I belong to you.’”
• Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete: “Christian morality is not the fulfillment of a law external to us, but
fidelity in following the implications of our encounter with Christ…. When you find the answer
 to Christ’s first words in the Gospel of John, the question, ‘What are you looking for,’ you stay
loyal to that way that answer came to you. It would be immoral not to remain loyal to it. What
is required is obedience to the way you were consigned to Christ.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• St. John Mary Vianney, the Cure of Ars (+1859)—an example of “humbly welcoming the
Word” in the face of overweening self-righteousness and dark hearts: When certain priests
from his diocese became jealous of John Vianney’s popularity and acclaim, they sent a
circular letter around asking the bishop to replace him due to his lack of learning. The letter
was accidentally sent to John Vianney. He unhesitatingly signed it and sent it on to the
bishop, remarking, "Now that they have my signature, the evidence against the culprit is
complete!" The priest who originated the letter came and begged his forgiveness. Saint John
told him that there was no need to apologize, and that he knew that he was an ignorant man
and that he should be replaced.

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• “Man does not develop through his own powers, nor can development simply be handed to
him…. Such development requires a transcendent vision of the person, it needs God: without
him, development is either denied or entrusted exclusively to man, who falls into the trap of
thinking he can bring about his own salvation, and ends up promoting a dehumanized form of
development.” (Caritatis in Veritate 11)
• "Morality should be inspired by an encounter with Jesus Christ, and not by a series of
indications: It is an encounter of love. If there is an encounter with the living person of Jesus
Christ, from this love all the rest flows. Morality has an ecclesial dimension.”
• “Christianity is not a list of prohibitions, but a Person, the loving God-Made-Man, Jesus
Christ, and for this reason, it is a joy to be a Christian.”
• “The whole of man is required for the knowledge of God—understanding, will, and heart. In
practice this means that we cannot know God unless we are prepared to accept his will, to
take it as the yardstick and the orientation for our lives. In still more practical terms, that
means that living in accordance with the commandments is a part of belonging to the pilgrim
fellowship of faith, the fellowship of those traveling toward God. That is not a heteronomous
rule being imposed upon man. It is in assenting to the will of God that our being made truly
similar to God is actually effected, and we become what we are: the image of God. And
because God is love, that is why the commandments, in which his will is made known, are
the essential variations of the single theme of love.”
• “In the Ten Commandments God presents himself, depicts himself, and at the same time
interprets human existence, so that its truth is made manifest, as it becomes visible in the
mirror of God’s nature, because man can only rightly be understood from the viewpoint of
God. Living out the Ten Commandments means living out our own resemblance to God,
responding to the truth of our nature, and thus doing good. To say it again, another way:
Living out the Ten Commandments means living out the divinity of man, and exactly that is
freedom: the fusing of our being with the Divine Being and the resulting harmony of all with
all.”
• “Living out the Ten Commandments means living out our own resemblance to God,
responding to the truth of our nature, and thus doing good. The Ten Commandments are the
answer to the inner demands of our nature. They are not at the opposite pole to our freedom
but are rather the concrete form it takes. The Ten Commandments are not imposed upon us
from without. On the contrary, they are strong internal incentives leading us to act in a certain
way.”
• “The incarnate Word, Word of Truth, makes us free and directs our freedom towards the
good. My dear young friends, meditate often on the word of God, and allow the Holy Spirit to
be your teacher. You will then discover that God’s way of thinking is not the same as that of
humankind’s. You will find yourselves led to contemplate the real God and to read the events
of history through his eyes. You will savor in fullness the joy that is born of truth. On life’s
journey, which is neither easy nor free of deceptions, you will meet difficulties and suffering
and at times you will be tempted to exclaim with the psalmist: ‘I am severely afflicted’ (Ps 119
[118]. v. 107). Do not forget to add as the psalmist did: ‘give me life, O Lord, according to
your word... I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law’ (ibid. vv. 107;
109). The loving presence of God, through his word, is the lamp that dispels the darkness of
fear and lights up the path even when times are most difficult.”
• “The Christian's life is a life of faith, founded on the Word of God and nourished by it. In the
trials of life and in every temptation, the secret of victory lies in listening to the Word of truth
and rejecting with determination falsehood and evil.”
7. Other Considerations
• Moses promises the people that, if they observe the statutes and decrees of the Lord he is
teaching them, they will live—not be smarter, or more enlightened, or better informed. Moses’
personal witness testifies to the truth that life radically changes if a believer carefully
observes the divine Word revealed to him or her. Moses’ presence is the thing that
persuades the people to listen to him. By their faithful observance they will take possession
of the land of their own rebellious hearts. The Commandments of the Lord are the Word of
Truth by which the Father gives birth to us. To be a “doer of the Word” is to be a person of
obedience, and obedience is “the way we overcome ourselves in our hearts” (LCO 19§III, St.
Thomas Aquinas in ST II-II.104.a 1 quoting St. Gregory the Great). This is critical because it
is from within our hearts that come evil thoughts, unchastity, greed, malice, deceit,
arrogance, folly. That is why the Father has planted the Word of Truth in our hearts. Today
his Son asks us to welcome that Word humbly. This means leaving aside our
preconceptions, our self-justification; it means being true to our heart as it has been
refashioned by the presence of God’s Word. The Pharisees “heard” the “tradition of the
elders” all right…but they were “hearers” only, that is, they deluded themselves, letting their
thoughts, their ideas, their understanding, their prejudices about “what is right” become idols
for them. Yet, it is so easy for us to act just like them (how often—and urgently—do we feel
the need to be right in many circumstances?). What can possibly liberate us from our
delusion? What can possibly change us so that with authentic humbleness we welcome
God’s Word and get out of our own narrow minds? What can turn us into true doers of the
Word? “When you have been shaken to the roots of your being by the mere presence of
someone who stands for a truth, then you are impelled to examine the truth he stands for,
and predisposed to apprehend it” (Gerald Vann, O.P.). That Presence which shakes us to the
roots of our being is Jesus Christ who comes to us today in the Eucharist.
Recommended Resources

Benedict XVI, Pope. Benedictus. Yonkers: Magnificat, 2006.

Biblia Clerus: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_eng.html

Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To Preach—Cycle B. Huntington: Our Sunday

Visitor, 1999.

Hahn, Scott:
http://www.salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/churchandbible/homilyhelps/homilyhelps.cfm.

Martin, Francis: http://www.hasnehmedia.com/homilies.shtml