Jesus Rulz!!!

When I was about 11 my Dad and I were building a new dog house for my new dog, "Rags". As I threw my hammer accross the yard, Dad said, "DeWayne, it's not the hammer's fault that you hit your thumb." He also made me go find the hammer and apologize to it for taking my frustration out on it. It was a point well made. In the seventh chapter of Mark's Gospel Jesus tells the Pharisees that it is not what goes into a person that causes evil; it is what is inside a person that makes evil things occur. Jesus' point is similar.

The Pharisees were very big on making sure people obeyed the very literal interpretation of the Jewish purity rituals. Some of those had to do with washing your hands and feet as you entered someone's house, or before you ate something. This what not just a matter of personal hygiene but a religious prescription. In other words not to wash made you ritually impure and therefore sinful, and not able to enter the temple, synagogue, or another Jew's home. These rules were very strict already and the Pharisees wanted them to be enforced even stricter. Jesus and His disciples were good Jews but not much concerned about human interpretation of God's law.

Jesus and the Pharisees seemed to bump heads a lot. Sometimes it looks like Jesus would heal people, or get His followers to disobey a Jewish law just to make the Pharisees, scribes, Levites, and other strict observers ticked off. His point is always to get the disciples and the nay sayers to understand that good rules are there to help us follow God more closely, not to seperate us from God more. His point on this occasion is to get the disciples and 'religious' folks to see where sinfulness begins. Our minds, hearts, and souls are what choose sin. Our minds, hearts, and souls are also what choose grace and virtue.

It is the same will that chooses to lie or decieve as it is that chooses to express thanks, forgiveness, and love. This a hard and very human lesson to learn. We have God's Word, God's law, God's Spirit, and God's Son to guide our choices. But we get to choose. Prayer, scripture reading, Mass attendance, and developing good and virtuous habits help us make good choices. But we cannot blame the devil, or God, or another person, or our car, or anything else for a choice we've made.

peace,
Fr. Chuck