At times, our ideas about God and His expectations get distorted. We can think of religious terrorists today and even we Christians have, at times, resorted to violence in God’s name. The Scriptures are a good corrective that our ideas about God and what He gives us and what He wants from us are accurate.
All people have been blessed with the Law given to Moses. As we see in today’s reading from Deuteronomy, Moses instructed the people that the commandments are given by God and no one should “add to them” (Dt 4:2; cf. Dt 12:32). Yet, with time, other traditions and interpretations were attached to the Law and took on an equal importance by the Israelites.
The prophets repeatedly emphasized the internal aspects of worship over and above the external rituals. In today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds His listeners of Isaiah’s words: “This people pays Me lip service but their hearts are from Me. Empty is the reverence they do Me because they teach as doctrines mere human precepts” (Mk 7:6; cf. Is 29:13).
The Ten Commandments are not subject to revision, as are a nation’s constitutions. St. Dominic distinguished the rules of his Order from moral principles by insisting that infractions of the community rules must not be considered matters of sin.
Jesus’ disciples were criticized for not washing their hands before eating, as we see in today’s Gospel (Mk 7:1-8, -15, 21-23). Mark tells us that washing hands was a traditional custom along with others, such as washing cups and jugs and cleaning food from the market. Very likely, Joseph and Mary observed such practices. Yet, Jesus wanted to separate good practices from the essential relationship with God. Emphasizing non-essentials distorts our impression of God and our relationship with Him.
By adding less important instructions to the essential we confuse our perception of God. Today’s reading from the Letter of James affirms: “Every good gift, every perfect gift comes down from the Father of the heavenly lights” (Js 1:17). God is a father, the giver of every good gift. In fact, as Paul asserts everything is a gift: “What do you have that you have not received?” (1 Cor 4:7).
According to the Letter of James, God is continually acting upon us to bring us not only physical being but also spiritual being: “He wishes to bring us to birth by the word of His truth so that we can become the first fruits of all His creatures” (Js 1:18).
It is in receiving God’s word and acting upon it that our responsibility lies: “Humbly welcome the word that has taken root in you, with its power to save you. Act on this word. If all you do is listen to it, you are deceiving yourselves” (Js 1:21-22).
Our response to the Giver of every good gift should first of all be gratitude! St. Thomas Aquinas reflects upon “gratitude”: “When there is greater favor on the part of the giver greater thanks are due on the part of the recipient. A favor is bestowed gratis (freely)…” (2a2ae. 106, 2).
Thomas points out that the favor may be greater when innocent persons receive: “In this way the innocent ones owe greater thanksgiving because they receive a greater gift from God, absolutely speaking, a more continuous gift…” (2a2ae. 106, 2).
Still, those who have sinned, probably all of us, receive a greater favor when we are given gifts: “The penitent is more bound to give thanks than the innocent, because what he receives is more gratuitously given: since, whereas he was deserving of punishment, he has received grace” (2a2ae. 106, 2).
The Letter of James describes our response to God as, “Religion that is pure and undefiled.” Of course, religion in this sense is not a denomination but, as St. Thomas teaches, a virtue related to justice, giving God what is due to Him: “It denotes properly a relation to God” (2a2ae. 81, 1).
Thomas explains: “For it is He to whom we ought to be bound as our unfailing principle; to whom also our choice should be resolutely directed as our last end; and whom we lose when we neglect Him by sin, and should recover by believing in Him and confessing our faith” (2a2ae. 81, 1).
Our relationship with God directs the elements of our lives towards Him. In addition to the worship that we give to God, all the other elements of our lives are oriented towards Him.
James asserts: “Religion pure and undefiled before God the Father is to help orphans and widows in their affliction and not to buy into the values of the world” (Js 1:27).
Religion, directs us to actions, as do all virtues. Thomas explains that the virtue of religion entails two types of actions. The first are those actions that are “proper” are those “by which we are directed to God alone, such as, sacrifice and adoration.”
At the same time, our service to our neighbors gives honor to God, as Thomas states, “And just as out of charity we love our neighbor for God’s sake, so the services we render our neighbor redound to God, according to ‘As long as you did it to one of these least of My brothers, you did it to Me’ (Mt 25:40). Consequently, those services which we render our neighbor, in so far as we refer them to God, are described as sacrifices… and it belongs properly to religion to offer sacrifice to God…”(2a2a. 188, 2).
The First Letter of John asks, “How can someone say he loves God whom he cannot see and does not love his brother whom he can see” (1 John 4:20).
In her book, The Dialogue, St. Catherine of Siena tells us that God instructed her, “And so I have set your neighbor as the means that you may do for him what you are not able to do for Me, that is, to love him without any regard for thanks and without expecting some return. And I consider that you do to Me what you do to him.” (The Dialogue, LXIV, 164).
Denis Vincent Wiseman, O.P.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. II trans. English Dominicans (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1947).