Tradition

Homily for Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

One word that stands out in today’s Gospel reading is the word “tradition.” It is a word that is familiar to us and to our way of life. In about two week’s time, we will be entering the Season of Lent. That season brings with it many traditions. While the Church teaches us that this season is a time of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, we have all grown up with certain traditions about how to live out those component parts of this penitential season. Many of us grew up with traditions about giving up some favorite treat or activity during Lent. While Lent brings with it many different kinds of traditions, the same can be said about our holidays, our holy days, and even the different seasons of the year. Keeping our various traditions alive can be a way of helping us to navigate through both our liturgical year and our secular calendar. However, sometimes those traditions can also get in the way of change.

Change for the sake of change is not a positive way of living. However, it must also be admitted that change can be healthy both physically and spiritually. Two of our devotional ways of praying can illustrate what I mean. Most of us grew up praying the three different sets of mysteries in the rosary. However, Pope St. John Paul II added a fourth set of mysteries. Most of us also grew up praying the fourteen different Stations of the Cross. Then the same Pope suggested adding different stations and even increasing the number to fifteen. I don’t think anyone has had a negative reaction to these changes. In both cases, the changes have led us to a deeper understanding of how to pray with the Scriptures.

The Gospel passage that we read today speaks of the same kind of change that took place in the early community of the Church when St. Mark wrote his Gospel. By this time, the church had grown to include both Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. Because the Gentiles had not grown up with the various dietary traditions that the Jews practiced, St. Mark included this episode from the life of Jesus to illustrate how traditions must be allowed to change with our circumstances. The Pharisees had grown so intransigent with regard to these dietary traditions that they accused Jesus and his disciples of ignoring the Law, forgetting that these traditions were not really part of the Law but were only human traditions.

As Jesus points out in the Gospel today, the real importance lies in our interior disposition and not in our outward actions. It is the intention of our hearts that really matters and will be the source of grace in our lives. When we forget the interior disposition and concentrate on the outward manifestations, we have lost our way.