Worship from the heart is the true religion

Homily for Twenty-Second Sunday of Year B

There is the story of a priest who was going through his mail after his powerful sermon the previous Sunday, on the pharisaic life of some of his parishioners. Taking out a single sheet of paper from an envelope, he found written on it just one word: “Fool.” The next Sunday at Mass, he announced, “I have known many people who have written letters and forgot to sign their names. But this week I received a letter from someone who signed his name and forgot to write a letter.”

Most of us have ambivalent feelings about the law. If pressed, we probably would be prepared to acknowledge that the law is necessary. On the other hand, many people would say that they feel constricted by the law - that it impacts on their freedom. But of course the law is about the common good, about ensuring that the rights of all people are upheld, and that the most vulnerable in society are protected. All the same, we know that there may be unjust laws and outdated laws that serve no purpose, and these need to be challenged and corrected.

The readings for this Sunday speak about law in religion. God’s Law is meant to be a framework for our flourishing as human beings. It is meant to help us live out the purpose of our existence and find our happiness. The problem was that by the time of the Pharisees, lots of smaller laws or traditions had been added onto God’s Law, in an attempt to protect it or help people to keep it. In some cases these traditions had become an obstacle in keeping the Law as God intended it, especially when human traditions were taking on an importance which would seem to rival the position of God’s Law.

In terms of this, in the readings today we are presented with two expressions of religion; a God-given, heart-centred religion which is life- giving and saving; and a religion of mere external observance and human customs and traditions.

For instance, the washing of hands is a common symbol of the cleansing of hearts before God. You will see the priest wash his hands just before the Eucharist part of the Mass, while he prays, “Wash away my iniquity and cleanse from my sins,” quoting Psalm 51. But the washing of hands is merely the outward observance; it can never in and of itself cleanse our hearts or relieve our guilt. And if the symbolic connection with the prayerful, heartfelt plea to God to cleanse our hearts is lost, the action of washing hands is meaningless.

We who are participating at Mass today are a people who are trying to take the practice of religion seriously, and we are challenged to examine our motives and intentions. The readings call us to integrity in our practice of faith. What we do must come from the heart and must permeate the whole of our lives.

Moses, in the first reading, says to the people that they must take notice of the laws and customs that he is teaching them, and observe them, so that they may have life. This means that true religion is life-giving. Human inventions and traditions are not in themselves life-giving, even if they may play a necessary role.

Often the moral law may seem to be restrictive to people, but we need to reflect that it is given to us to help us to be happy. Certain kinds of behaviour and ways of living are just not conducive to human flourishing and happiness. God our Creator, is the architect and perfecter of human nature, and he knows what will work the best for our human fulfilment and happiness.

The second reading from the Letter of St James backs this up in saying that the teaching and laws that come from God are perfect and good. They are perfect and good in the sense that they bring us to salvation and happiness and they prepare us to fulfil the purpose for which we were created, which is eternal happiness with God.

The Word of God is a saving word, but the reading also says that this teaching which is the Word of God must be accepted by us and obeyed. St James points out that we need to put the Word of God into practice with heart-felt commitment, in order for it to save us. Mere external observance of the Word is external religion; it is a religion of human customs - the type of which Jesus was critical of in today’s Gospel.

St James poses a great challenge to us in defining pure religion: “Pure, unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows when they need it, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.” This challenge should remain with us always. It is a test of our heart-felt commitment to God and of pure religion.

St Teresa of Avila, the great Spanish mystic who has been named the Doctor of Prayer, picks up on the teaching of St James, when she says that if you want to know if you are making progress in the spiritual life, examine how charitable you are, not how prayerful you are and not how holy you feel. You see, true religion, expresses itself outwardly in charity toward others.

In the Gospel we see that the Pharisees and scribes had transformed the true religion and relationship between the people and God into a religion of many rules and precepts. Religion had become a whole series of 613 rules governing outward behaviour. But, true life-giving religion comes from the heart. That is why Jesus refers to their external observance of religion as lip-service from people whose hearts are far from God.

The key word in Jesus’s teaching is the heart, which is used three times in this passage. In the Bible, the heart represents the inner depths of the person, the seat of decision-making where a person either responds to God or resists him. The heart is the source of emotions such as love, grief, anxiety and joy. In the Bible, the heart is also the source of thought, will and conscience, unlike in modern times when we tend to associate these things with the mind. The point is that in true religion we lift up all that is interior - mind and heart, to God.

True religion involves a conversion of heart. Jesus insists that the heart is what needs to change first. It is not what enters a person from outside that can harm them, but what comes from inside a person that harms them.

The heart is the root of our attitudes and tendencies which truly will make of us sons and daughters of God, or separate us from God because the heart is also from where the evil arises. The list of evil things that come from a person’s heart are things we know as human beings. All of us have faced one or two or more of those things from within ourselves. We know the destruction and evil that we are capable of, coming from within us.

How then do we return the heart to God? How do we approach him? We come to him with broken hearts, converted hearts, hearts full of love for him. The religion brought by Jesus cannot be reduced to external rites, a moral code or a doctrine. No law, big or small, has meaning if it is not accompanied by love and if it is not consumed in love.

So, our relationship with God is primarily a heart thing; it is not about external practices of religion. External practices of religion are only useful inasmuch as they serve to express the heart or they are a concrete prayer for a closer observance with our hearts of the things of God.

Today we have the invitation to draw close to God with our hearts. Worship from the heart is the true religion and this involves obedience to God. The Lord wants the heart, not just lip-service or external observances.