Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

I do not know what pure virgin coconut oil or olive oil is but just the sound of it makes me want to choose it over the non-virgin one. We do not want things adulterated with other so-called lesser ingredients. We prefer pure breeds to mongrels. We think twice about half-breeds because we tend to think of them as half-clean or half-contaminated.

Come to think of it, is there even such a thing as a pure Filipino or clean Catholic or pure human being? Racism, bigotry, even genocides are fueled by all sorts of dangerous notions of purity.

Today our Lord invites us to reexamine what makes for purity. He tells us that what makes us unclean is not unwashed hands or plates or questionable pedigree. What defiles is not what comes into us from outside but whatever comes out from inside ourselves. What stains us is not from without but from what wells up within.

Evil is everywhere but what should concern us are the hurtful ideas and motives and plots that lurk beneath the surface. The dark side is the dark inside, not so much the dark outside. 

This is liberating because, well, we tend to get overwhelmed more by the dark outside. Should we be so frightened or frazzled by hateful language and lies out there? Should we allow ourselves to be so unsettled by the raw sewage that pollutes our social media and the public square?

Or should we not be more wary about the dark reflux that rises from our insides? 

In inviting us to ponder what is pure or impure, our Lord asks us to turn inward, to look inside our heart. What do we keep inside?

If this heart of ours were an art gallery, what kind of pieces would we hang on its walls? Surely there will be landscapes and portraits that have meant so much to us. Colors and all kinds of luminous faces that give clarity and peace to us.

But here inside our heart, there will be shadows too. Perhaps nothing really murderous or malicious. But there will be deceptions and little lies we tell ourselves. Lusts that can turn harmful, pain and insecurities we nurse, even anger or arrogance, indifference or exhaustion. Perhaps nothing grievous but enough to hurt back and turn us away from each other and ourselves.     

The dark side is the dark inside, not so much the dark outside.

Let us take care then to always look inside because inside is also where God looks. The external rules and regulations of religion are there to bring us closer to God and to one another. Sadly we can game these externals to impress others and ourselves, even if doing so only distracts us from what is truly pure in the eyes of God.  

In berating the rigidly compliant Pharisees and scribes, the Lord in effect is telling us today that our worship is worthless if we worship God with words but our hearts are far from God. Quoting from the prophet Isaiah (Mk 7:6-7), he says,

This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.

A heart that is far from God is a heart that is far from those who are dear to God. And by tradition, those dear to God are the orphans and widows and foreigners, the ones at the margins who are more vulnerable and in need, the ones who subsist from day to day because they are denied the social support and security of the community.

In his letter, our second reading today, James (1:27) confirms what purity is:

Religion that is pure and undefiled
before God and the Father is this:
to care for orphans and widows in their affliction
and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

What makes us pure then is another kind of stain, the stain of blood and sweat, the stain of tears we shed for the ones forgotten and emptied at the edges.

The next time we obsess about purity, we do well to question our presumption. We place a premium on purity (especially the ones of the unadulterated or extra-virgin kind) but does this kind of purity bring us closer to God? We do not like messiness but does messiness repel God?  

If we could look inside the heart of God and sense how it beats for half-breeds and mongrels and marginals whose lives are extra messy, we will know better than to obsess about defilement or purity.