for August 4
Memorial of St. John Vianney, Priest

The first reading begins the section of Jeremiah’s prophecy that is called the Book of Consolation. The way the lectionary (the book of readings at Mass prepared by the Church) selects verses from chapter 30, one can easily misinterpret this first reading. These beginning verses are not meant to be read as a harsh indictment against the people. In fact, the LORD is listing the pains and sufferings of his people out of empathy and compassion. Thus the second half of the reading is not a change in meaning, but a continuation of the Lord’s determination to come to Israel’s rescue. The passage culminates in the lovely frequent refrain in the Old Testament: “You shall be may people, and I will be your God.”

This passage, as so much of Jeremiah, can be taken to prayer whenever we feel challenged by what is happening to us, when suffering a severe loss or undergoing some difficult trial. The Lord is empathetic and promises us his saving power. Sometimes, as is the case with Jeremiah, that is all we can hold on to.

In today’s gospel, Jesus is once again engaged in a polemical dispute with the Pharisees and scribes. The dispute begins with the Pharisees’ insistence on the observance of the rules for ritual hand washing (nothing to do with sanitary practices). In the full text of chapter 15, Jesus immediately responds by raising the stakes by bringing up a legal loophole that was used to evade the duty to care for elderly parents. In the gospel, Jesus then appeals to the people to denounce the Pharisees publicly.

Did you ever notice that Jesus rarely, if ever, praises people for obeying the rules—certainly not with any major accolades? Yet he seems always at the ready to give lawbreakers a pass. Christians who take seriously this gospel portrait of Jesus rank rather low on the “law and order” meter—as did Jesus himself. When conservatives hold up the virtue of conformity and obedience as the epitome of Christian life, they have to pick gingerly through the gospels to support their case, ignoring so much in the gospels to the contrary.

Still, a lot of people—maybe all of us at times—can find rather off-putting Jesus’ propensity to disdain the rules. For there’s a deep-seated human need for order based on adherence to a code of laws. Our observance of these rules gives us a sense of justification and entitlement. We argue that we’ve earned what we have gotten and therefore deserve a superiority over the non-conformists. Of course, the condition we impose is that we get to choose the rules that are to our liking. You seldom find someone so committed to obedience in the abstract that he or she supports vigorous enforcement of rules that are personally held in disfavor. This instinct for conformity and abiding by the law provides the bedrock for civilization, and in particular for religious righteousness, which makes especially troubling Jesus’ failure to embrace it wholeheartedly.

Obviously Jesus is coming to fidelity and commitment from a far different route from the one that the Pharisees and scribes of every age want to impose. The purpose of the gospels is to challenge our approach and advance the radical way of Jesus.
—Walter F. Modrys SJ

Today’s readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.