23 August 2016 - traditional medicine

[ Today's Readings ]

We ask you, brothers and sisters,
with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
and our assembling with him,
not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly

We need not be shaken out of our minds suddenly. Jesus himself can protect us from anxiety. One of the ways he does this is by laying down unchanging teaching to which we can cling, by which we can stand firm.

To this end he has also called you through our Gospel
to possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, stand firm
and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught,
either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.

If we want the traditions we hold to be an everlasting encouragement we need to do better than the scribes and Pharisees. They focus on points of minutia at the expense of the big picture.

You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin,
and have neglected the weightier things of the law:
judgment and mercy and fidelity.

They do the right things. Jesus says, "these you should have done" but adds "without neglecting the others." Justice and mercy are the main things he is concerned about. Tithes are oriented toward making us more just and helping us to show more mercy. They are not meant to be things by which we can consider ourselves superior to others. And so we should ask ourselves, is our Catholicism making us judgmental? Is our clinging to tradition helping us to be more or less merciful to others? We must not be blind to sin but recognizing sin in others ought never make us feel better about ourselves. It means that the work of mercy and justice still needs to be done.

Let us allow ourselves to be cleaned from the inside out. Justice and mercy and tithing become more than merely what we show the world. They begin to define who we are at the deepest level.

Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup,
so that the outside also may be clean.

When we don't pick and choose the traditions we hold they purify us from within. They have the power to become an everlasting encouragement and good hope precisely because of the grace of Jesus that works within them. This morning let us experience the LORD encouraging our hearts and strengthening them in every good deed and word. In our turn, let us rejoice.

let the sea and what fills it resound;
let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult.
Before the LORD, for he comes;
for he comes to rule the earth.