“The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
― Martin Luther
(To do one's duty conscientiously is transformative. How might you do so today?)
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Gn 1:20—2:4a; Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Mk 7:1-13
When the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem
gathered around Jesus,
they observed that some of his disciples ate their meals
with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands.
(For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews,
do not eat without carefully washing their hands,
keeping the tradition of the elders.
And on coming from the marketplace
they do not eat without purifying themselves.
And there are many other things that they have traditionally observed,
the purification of cups and jugs and kettles and beds.)
So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him,
“Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders
but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?”
He responded,
“Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites,
as it is written:
This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.
You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”
He went on to say,
“How well you have set aside the commandment of God
in order to uphold your tradition!
For Moses said,
Honor your father and your mother,
and Whoever curses father or mother shall die.
Yet you say,
‘If someone says to father or mother,
“Any support you might have had from me is qorban”’
(meaning, dedicated to God),
you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother.
You nullify the word of God
in favor of your tradition that you have handed on.
And you do many such things.”
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Reflection on the Scriptures
God has made us little less than the angels and we are crowned with glory and honor.
Our awesome responsibility toward all creation may seem a heavy burden. Yet we are trusted by God. My response to this trust seemed to be “who, me?” and yet, yes, me.
The gospel reading where Pharisees called out some of Jesus’ disciples for not following the tradition of hand washing before meals gave Jesus an opportunity to shine a light on the deeper, wider issue: Do we follow laws, human tradition, and discard the heart of the matter? Do we listen to God with the ears of the heart? Do we respond with love and trust to his word, his creation, his trust in
us?
- by Suzanne Braddock
The Son of God Became Human
From The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Part One, Section Two, Chapter Two
Article 3: He Was Conceived by the Power of the Holy Spirit, and Born of the Virgin Mary
Paragraph 1: The Son of God Became Man
III. TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN
467 The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God's Son assumed it. Faced with this heresy, the fourth ecumenical council, at Chalcedon in 451, confessed:
Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; "like us in all things but sin". He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his
humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God.91
(Footnote references in the Catechism.)
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