Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-8; Psalm 14; James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
To live with faith is
a matter of interiority and also of external action. True faith requires both a
spirituality and a morality. An interiority without external action will
produce good intentions, but, as the saying goes, good intentions alone are the
paving stones of the road to hell. On the other hand external action without
interiority becomes hypocrisy or legalism. A purely external observance of
religious rules, traditions and customs is empty, dry and dead.
True faith moves from
the heart through the understanding to the hands. It is the clear teaching of
the readings today. Jesus says that it is not what goes into a person from
outside that makes them unclean, it is what comes out of a person from inside.
The word has been planted in us, says the Letter of James, and it is in our
hearts that it grows and flourishes. But this can happen only if we do what the
word tells us. It is not enough just to listen to it and pay lip-service to its
demands. One’s heart might still be far away and if one’s heart is far away
then our actions alone will be vain.
What keeps us alert to
the demands of true faith is the presence of the poor. James says pure unspoilt
religion in God’s eyes means helping orphans and widows. They symbolise the
most vulnerable people in our communities. Our hearts are usually moved by
their plight. They are real needy people in our communities, these orphans and
widows, but they also represent all the needy people in our communities. Our
neighbour calls us to our responsibility, they call us to sincerity in our
living of our faith.
So they call to us,
touching our hearts and waiting to see whether that movement of compassion will
be translated into action. We know how central it is to the teaching of Jesus:
love your neighbour. Your neighbour reminds you of what true faith involves and
your neighbour calls you to live it.
There is another
aspect to this call of the neighbour. The Scriptures tell us again and again that
God is the Father of the orphan and the defender of the widow. So when we
respond to the orphan and widow according to their need we are in the company
of the Father. In fact we are then God’s instruments, the means by which he
cares for the orphan and defends the widow. When we live like this, with our
spiritual and interior inspirations translated into practical works of justice
and charity, then we are like God. And this is the strongest possible
motivation for moral action in the Scriptures: be like your heavenly Father, be
holy as he is holy, be just as he is just, be perfect as he is perfect, be
merciful as he is merciful.
The other
characteristic of true faith according to the Letter of James is to keep oneself
uncontaminated by the world. It does not mean that we are not to get our hands
dirty. We must get involved in the world’s affairs. We must work to establish
and to defend justice. We must work to rescue the oppressed and the persecuted.
We must welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, cloth the naked and visit those
in prison.
Our hands will
inevitably get dirty but it is in our hearts and minds that we must keep
ourselves uncontaminated by the world. To do this we must remain close to God
in prayer, we must live with Christ and meditate each day his word which is
planted in our hearts, we must allow the Spirit to heal and to transform us by
the gift of love which he pours into our hearts.
True faith requires
both a spirituality and a morality. It is established first in our hearts, it becomes
more and more our own through our understanding, and it finds its fulfilment in
our actions, in the way that we live. May we attend each day to this gift of
faith so that we may live more fully the life God wishes to share with us.
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