Saints Paul Miki And His Companions, Martyrs 

1 Kings 8:22-23,27-30
Mark 7:1-13

Today the Church celebrates the memorial of the martyrs from the Orient world; St. Paul Miki and companions. They offered themselves for the sake of Christ; an oblation for the course of righteousness and truth and the spread of the good news in the world. For them, obedience and sacrifice are of sides of the coin.

In today’s gospel, we have a discourse concerning the Jewish ritual of hand-washing and purification of vessels.  It was developed to express a deeply felt reverence and love for God.  But by Jesus’ time, the essence was nullified and was forgotten.  The Pharisees continued imposing and expanding the rule, even though it had degenerated into an empty and oppressive ritual. In today’s gospel passage, here lies the dispute: They were scandalized that some of Jesus’ disciples ate their meal with unclean hands.  The phrase in Greek is ate breads, The Pharisees were angered and challenged Jesus on this breach of ancient tradition.

Jesus responded by calling them hypocrites, literally stage actors, whose outward apparent piety disguised their empty hearts and empty ritual.  Jesus was not rejecting tradition per se.  Rather, he was rejecting their human tradition and their hypocrisy in how they practiced these traditions. In other words, one important idea we can find from today’s gospel is that rites and rituals have the power to transform us only when our hearts are grounded in God’s love — especially when we, who are in the wilderness, are in need of God’s cleansing grace.

Like the Pharisees, we too may risk turning meaningful traditions — and disciplines — into empty legalistic and oppressive ritual.  Whether it is the ritual washing of hands for the Jews of Jesus’ day, or in our day Friday abstention, or even the way we celebrate at Eucharist — do we merely consume bread and wine, or are we transformed by the body and blood? Do we acknowledge that we are in God’s presence at Mass and God’s presence is within us or we do things just for mere show?

The fact is that God sees you. He knows our minds and sees our conscience, therefore, a proper daily examination of conscience will help our conscience formation. It is a training that comes with discipline while committing everything into the hands of God; sincere heart and a sure faith, with hearts that have been purified from a guilty conscience and with bodies washed with clean water.-Hebrews 10:22

Fr Joseph Osho