Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8
The First Reading depicts the unsurpassed power of divine providence over human ingenuity. Human laws and traditions rightly are modified according to changing times and circumstances. In contrast, God’s law is immutable and therefore, as we hear in today’s Scripture, nothing dare be added or subtract from it. Peoples who truly flourish do so by conforming their own relationships and activities more and more to God’s designs.
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
For the previous five Sundays, our reading of Mark’s Gospel was interrupted by the insertion of Jesus’ teaching on the bread from heaven (John 6:1-71). We now return to the Gospel of Mark, although the motif of food and eating continues. The scribes and Pharisees notice that some of Jesus’ disciples forgo the customary purification before eating thereby violating Jewish ritual practice. Temptations relentlessly seek to lure us from God’s unequalled importance by morphing externals into essentials. External ritual never can make us holy. Jesus teaches that it is our hearts that matter the most; that is, why we do what we do matters immensely (v. 15).
