Saint Moses the Black. Read about him.
Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’” (Mark 7.6). Once again in today’s Gospel reading Jesus brings us to the centrality of our heart in the economy of salvation.
The message about hypocrisy in today’s Gospel reading is fairly straightforward and requires little exposition. The “Pharisees… with some of the Scribes” – Jesus’ quotidian antagonists – come to him self-righteous accusations, masquerading as a question: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with hands defiled?”
And Jesus turns rebukes them with the words of the prophet Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”
Over the past several weeks, as we have been marinating in the great “bread of heaven” discourse from Saint John’s Gospel. In it we saw the remedy to the problem Jesus elucidates in today’s reading from Mark. Remember that the way to heaven is through coming to Jesus in faith, love, and humility, feeding on his flesh and drinking his blood, and so becoming inebriated, as Theophylact says, with divinity.
Today’s reading zeros in on the necessity of humility and self-emptying in this process. Remember that we must come to the Lord in faith – BELIEVING in him, trusting him. And remember that, as St. Augustine says, this kind of belief is a belief that works by LOVE: An inner trust that seeks the Lord’s will, and so to honor him, and to obey him. And remember that this works by humility and self-surrender, by being willing to let go of everything in order to seek the Lord’s pleasure. This is what St. Paul means when he says: “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13.3).
And this attainment of the Lord, of course, is a process that takes place in the heart, in the center of our being, the location of our memory and desire. Jesus said to them: “This people honors me with their lips, but the HEART is far from me.”
Deep in our heart is the place where we keep those things that inform our desires. And Jesus is hear highlighting the necessity of purifying that place, and so making it a fit habitation for God to dwell in. In order to be saved, we must be given entirely to the dynamism that is at work in Christ – the Holy Spirit, who (as the Fathers bear witness) is the love that obtains between the Father and Son. It must be the Holy Spirit who sheds his light on the recesses of our hearts’ depth, who drives out every injury, every wound, every uncleanness, every power of evil, and who displaces all of those things, and begins to speak to the desires within us, enabling us to bear divine fruit in the realm of action, manifesting in our lives: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Galatians 5.22f).
So what is the problem with the Pharisees and Scribes? In what does their hypocrisy consist? It consists in thinking that action by itself can please, or displease, God. You may remember the story of the prophet Samuel being commanded by the Lord to go and anoint a king to replace Saul. Samuel was looking for David, though he didn’t know it at the time. Samuel looked at the sons of Jesse, and his eyes lighted on the most impressive of them, named Eliab; “and [Samuel] thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him.’ But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature… for the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but THE LORD LOOKS ON THE HEART” (1 Sam. 16.6f). And indeed, Samuel had been told by the Lord that the “Lord has sought out a man AFTER HIS OWN HEART” to be king over his people (1 Sam. 13.14).
Purity of heart must therefore be our purpose, if we desire to attain the Kingdom of God. The Lord never withholds himself from us. He says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him” (Rev. 3.20). And in another place he says, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14.23). The Lord constantly seeks entry into our heart. Our task is to make a place for him there, by cleansing our hearts of “evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness,” and every evil thing that comes from within, and defiles us (Mark 7.21ff). And once we have cleansed our hearts, through tears, self-denial, confession, penance, acts of selflessness, alms, and the other means given to us by God to attain purity, then we must seek the Lord in prayer, and especially in the Blessed Sacrament, the wellspring and pinnacle of all prayer. To eat the bread of angels means to attain to the open contemplation of the Lord, from which vision the heavenly powers draw all their power and vitality (Denis the Carthusian).
But what does this mean? And how does it work? It begins, as St. Paul tells us in today’s epistle reading from Ephesians, with our having “girded [our] loins with truth” (6.14). The preeminent truth with which we gird ourselves is the truth of God himself: that he made us, that he loves us, and that he sent his Son to live and die for the sake of that love. These are the central facts of our faith, with which we must continually confront our minds, through prayer and meditation on Scripture. The truth of God thus becomes a springboard to the contemplation of the Lord in every circumstance. St. Moses the Black, one of the great desert fathers of 4th century Egypt, said:
God is… to be known [in this life] from the grandeur and beauty of His creatures, from His providence which governs the world day by day, from his righteousness and from the wonders which He shows to His saints in each generation. When we reflect on the measurelessness of His power and His unsleeping eye which looks upon the hidden things of the heart and which nothing can escape, we are filled with the deepest awe, marveling at Him and adoring Him. When we consider that he numbers the raindrops, the sand of the sea and the stars of heaven, we are amazed at the grandeur of His nature and His wisdom. When we think of His ineffable and inexplicable wisdom, His love for mankind, and His limitless long-suffering at man’s innumerable sins, we glorify Him. When we consider His great love for us, in that though we had done nothing good He, being God, deigned to become man in order to save us from delusion, we are roused to longing for Him. When we reflect that He Himself has vanquished in us our adversary, the devil, and that He has given us eternal life if only we would choose and turn towards His goodness, then we venerate Him. There are many similar ways of seeing and apprehending God, which grow in us according to OUR LABOR and to THE DEGREE OF OUR PURIFICATION. (from Vol. 1 of the Kallistos Ware Philokalia, pp. 96-97)
So let us not be hypocritical Pharisees, who outwardly do and say the right things, but inwardly nurse uncleanness. Still less should we avoid hypocrisy by allowing our outward actions to be conformed to the evil within. Rather let us put on the whole armor of God, and incline our hearts to the Lord, knowing that as we were once slaves of sin, we may now renew our obedience from the heart to the standard of teaching to which we have been committed, and having been set free from sin, become slaves of righteousness and sanctification (cf. Romans 6.17ff).
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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