Things that Defile

Today's Reflections

 

Things that Defile

Mt 15:1-2, 10-14

¹Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ²“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash [their] hands when they eat a meal.” ¹⁰He summoned the crowd and said to them, “Hear and understand. ¹¹It is not what enters one’s mouth that defiles that person; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one.” ¹²Then his disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” ¹³He said in reply, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. ¹⁴Let them alone; they are blind guides [of the blind]. If a blind person leads a blind person, both will fall into a pit.”

It is not what enters one’s mouth that defiles that person. To a Jew, to wash one’s hands before eating goes beyond physical cleanliness. In fact, even when one’s hands are clean, one has to do ritual washing before taking in food. It is a matter of following God’s law that has been handed down from father to son for generations. It ensures that nothing impure would be taken with the meal. The question of the Pharisees and scribes implies how strictly it is practiced by observant Jews.

But here Jesus tells the crowd that nothing that goes into one’s mouth could render one unclean. Not the food one eats, not even the state of one’s hands when one eats. He goes on to say that one is sullied by wickedness conceived in one’s own heart. This then is the importance of ritual cleanliness: to clean not just one’s body but one’s heart and soul as well.

Jesus comes to free men and women from the enslavement of sin. He has given us the sacraments to bring order into the world and in our hearts.

Today we commemorate the dedication

of one of the four great basilicas in Rome.

Let us pray that Mary continue to guide us

as we struggle to live a life pleasing to God.