Year B
Discover the deeper meaning and connections found in this week's readings, through these great commentaries written by our priests.
Explore this week's readings and hear what God is saying to us through His Word.
Find out more about how we can mark this special day in our liturgy.
See our music recommendations for the liturgy.
In a radical and dangerous move, Jesus undermines the purity legislation of Leviticus by presenting his view of the categorisation of people as clean or unclean. For those to whom Jesus was speaking, an unclean person was defined, among other things, by the food consumed. Jesus turns this legislation on its head by saying that it is not what enters people which makes them unclean, rather, it is what comes from the heart.
As Jesus confronts this aspect of the ‘Torah’ he prepares the ground for his entry into pagan, and therefore unclean, territory – the ten cities or Decapolis.
Where is our ‘Decapolis’?
Jesus would have been thoroughly familiar with the requirements of the Torah. At the same time, he saw how his contemporaries had “put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.” Jesus is faithful to the prophetic tradition that ‘cleanness’ or holiness is a matter of the heart. Jesus saw the danger of strict legal observance, which brings comfort and certainty, as blinding a person to the purpose of the law. So, Jesus can say, “This people honours me with lip service while their hearts are far from me”. The law, or Torah, because of the way it was interpreted, had become an obstacle to holiness, to God and to the way of divine love.
Where does all this leave us?
Our tradition, or ‘Tradition’ has many laws. We are famous for our certainty about rules and regulations, which is a gift to the Catholic tradition. However, our rules, norms, and guidelines, whether moral or liturgical, must always be applied with an openness to agape and the movement of an informed conscience.
The rigorous and hair-splitting observances which Jesus condemned must not squeeze out the capacity to hear the Word of God, who is Jesus, speaking in our hearts.
Some questions:
· “Conscience is our most secret core and sanctuary. Here we are alone with God whose voice echoes in our depths.” (CCC1795) How effectively do we preach the dignity of conscience, which is the; ‘aboriginal vicar of Christ’?
· “In Catholic doctrine there exists an order or hierarchy of truths, since they vary in their relation to the foundation of Christian faith”. (CCC 90) How do we present that variance? How does that order or hierarchy impact on pastoral practice and personal discernment? How do we interpret inerrancy given this variation in the hierarchical order of truths?
· The tradition that Jesus undermined used religious law to exclude people. Can that ever be justified? How do we avoid the dangers?
The Collect of today’s Mass is complex, both in the Latin and the current English version. In the 1570 Roman Missal it was the Collect for the 6thSunday after Pentecost. In the modern revision the Latin text was amplified, which makes English translation more difficult and the result somewhat clumsy. It will require careful speaking by the Celebrant.
It might interest readers to compare our current English version with the 1570, unamplified Latin Collect. This is a more or less literal translation of it by Fr. Adrian Fortescue in the Layfolks Missal of 1912:
O God of hosts, to whom belongeth all that is best:
implant in our hearts love for thy name,
and grant within us an increase of religion;
that thou mayest foster within us what is good,
and by thy loving-kindness
zealously guard what thou hast fostered.
Through our Lord...
The Prayer over the Offerings parallels the term ‘mystery’ – meaning the action of the Eucharist, with ‘power’ – meaning the effects of the Eucharistic action. This is a feature of several ‘Over the Offerings’ prayers in the Roman tradition. The idea is that what we do at the altar acts in synergy with what God does at the heavenly altar (see Eucharistic Prayer 1).
The Prayer after Communion is one of many texts which sees in the action of the Eucharist the originating power (the beautiful phrase, ‘food of charity’) for all Christian ministry to our neighbour. It might be taken as an echo of the Gospel for this Sunday.
It might be appropriate to have the following Bidding as the last of the biddings in the Prayer of the Faithful:
Let us pray that we who worship and honour the Lord
may do so not just with our voice on a Sunday,
but in the conduct of our life every day.
These hymns have been chosen from the Laudate Hymnbook:
821 The Kingdom of God
872 My God, accept my heart this day
908 Blest are the poor in heart
933 Father, hear the prayer we offer
934 Dear Lord and Father of mankind
Do you have questions about the liturgy and how we are called to participate in it? Explore how the Church councils, saints, and popes have answered this key question and many more.
Every movement of the Mass is rich in meaning but we can become over-familiar with it. Rediscover the Mass and explore how it relates to the Exodus story, where many of its rituals come from, and how it makes Jesus present to us today.
