By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
Live, Submit and Create!
22nd Sunday in Ordinary time – August 29, 2021
Deuteronomy 4: 1-2,6-8; James 1: 17-18,21-22, 27; Mark 7: 1-8,14-15,21-23
The use of hand sanitisers and surface disinfectants, the sight of the gloves and the PPEs, the masks and the face shields, have not yet gone out of our daily use! Some of these habits are even becoming a bit obsessive for some persons who have ceased to live their ‘normal’ lives on any count. There is fear and scrupulosity filled still in the air! This is a sanitary crisis but what we see in the Gospel today is a taboo..that is a spiritual crisis! Doing things without knowing why we do it! We are so scrupulous about doing them, but without really experiencing the real effects that they were meant to create! The sad fact in our Christian life is that our most crucial expressions of faith too can run this risk – just imagine ‘saying’ or ‘reciting’ prayers without really meaning what they intend, ‘attending’ or ‘hearing’ Mass without really celebrating the Sacrament that it is… are these not really crises? The key to avoid such a crisis is being aware of the living Presence of the Lord with us.
The Word this Sunday instructs us on this secret of Christian living… to live in the presence of the Lord, to submit to the presence of the Lord and to create the presence of the Lord wherever we are!
The first reading invites us to live in the presence of the Lord in and through the lovely faith traditions that we have inherited from our parents and elders, from the faith community and from those who have spiritual care over us! Laws and Customs that the Israelites had were lived traditions passed on for generations – they were practical, useful and relevant. They had their purpose and meaning, but in the course of time, they were reified as actions to be performed without the purpose that underlaid them. This led them to being superstitious and hypocritical, as Jesus points out in the Gospel today. What about our own experience: how many of our practices in daily life have already become superstitions and blind customs! Are we into things which we really do not understand why we are doing? Such a reasoning can become an easy way out for the younger generation to throw out things that have been handed down to them – but let us be sincere! How much have I tried to really understand the faith traditions handed down? How faithful have I been in receiving them? How eager have I been in finding the presence of God in them? The call here is for both – the elders in a community to pass on traditions that help persons to live in the presence of the Lord and the younger generation to strive to discover means of living the presence of the Lord in daily life through simple traditions, laws and customs which enshrine the experience of ages!
The second reading invites us to submit to the presence of the Lord in the living Word that speaks to us every day! The Word has not only been in history a living presence of the Lord, but also in the present, the Word lives amidst us and the Word is the most concrete presence of the Lord with us. James hits the nail on its head when he says – it is not enough to listen to the Word and admire the Word, but it is necessary that I submit to the Word. That is, I need to listen, treasure within me and shape my entire life in the light of the Word; in short obey the Word and live by It. Submitting to the presence of the Lord would mean, at every moment of my life asking myself the question, what is the most worthy thing to do, in the presence of the Lord? Because the presence of the Lord surrounds me all the time, every moment of my life – hence the division between my private self and public self, my personal life and portrayed life, cannot exist! The presence of the Lord, in the form of the Word, needs to rule every moment and every movement of my life – I need to live according to the voice of the Lord. The Word cannot be reserved only for some specific moments of my life, or for the public manifestation of some ideas or beleifs. The Word is for my entire life and every bit of it. I have to live the Word, live by the Word and live as the Word tells me, in all that I say, in all that I do, and in all that I am. My choices, my priorities and my values have to be clearly and explicitly guided by the Word, the presence of the Lord!
The Gospel invites us to create the presence of the Lord, by our very presence wherever we are. It summarises the lesson of the Word today, making the correlation between the traditions to be lived, the Lord to be obeyed and the effects of it in the daily life! Here it is that we can make a solid difference between two modes of Christian living: the Performance Mode and the Personal Mode. The Performance Mode insists on the actions, rites and rituals, traditional customs to be performed by all means and making it the centre of faith and Christian living. The Personal Mode rebels against this, saying it is all between oneself and God, a relationship that has to be cared in private, nothing to do with all these public manifestations and compulsory adherence. Which of these is right? Neither of these, isnt it? Yes, there is another Mode that the Word suggests today: the Prophetic Mode. The Prophetic Mode of Christian living, insists that we feel the presence of God on a daily basis, even amidst things that go out of control; it is a mode of living our Christian life in communion with all my brothers and sisters, feeling one with them in all their joys and sorrows; it is a mode that leads me to a complete union with the Presence of the Lord which is not only felt or experienced, but created by my very life style, by the way I stand for truth and justice, by the way I live for love and compassion and by the way I am ready to die for righteousness and integrity! Clearly therefore, the call is to outgrow both performance mode and personal mode of Christian living and mature towards a prophetic mode of living, where my presence can become the Presence of the Lord to the world around me!
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.