Thus says the Lord God: “Honour your father and your mother, that you may be long lived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give you. You must not kill. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not bear false witness against your neighbour. You must not covet your neighbour’s house, neither desire his wife, nor his servant, nor his handmaid, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.” And all the people saw the voices and the flames, and the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and being terrified and struck with fear, they stood afar off, saying to Moses: “Speak to us, and we will hear. Let not the Lord speak to us, lest we die.” And Moses said to the people: “Fear not, for God is come to prove you, and that the dread of Him might be in you, and you should not sin.” And the people stood afar off. But Moses went to the dark cloud in which God was. And the Lord said to Moses: “Thus must you say to the children of Israel: ‘You have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. You must not make gods of silver, nor make to yourselves gods of gold. You must make an altar of earth to me, and you must offer on it your holocausts and peace-offerings, your sheep and oxen, in every place where the memory of my Name will be.’”Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The Church reminds us today of the divine Commandments which relate to our duties towards our neighbour, beginning with that which enjoins respect to parents. Now that the faithful are intent on the great work of the conversion and amendment of their lives, it is well that they should he reminded that their duties towards their fellow-men are prescribed by God himself. Hence, it was God whom we offended, when we sinned against our neighbour. God first tells us what He Himself has a right to receive from our hands: He bids us adore and serve Him. He forbids the worship of idols. He enjoins the observance of the Sabbath, and prescribes sacrifices and ceremonies: but, at the same time, He commands us to love our neighbours as ourselves, and assures us that He will be their avenger when we have wronged them, unless we repair the injury.
The voice of Jehovah on Sinai is not less commanding when it proclaims what our duties are to our neighbour, than when it tells us our obligations to our Creator. Thus Enlightened as to the origin of our duties, we will have a clearer view of the state of our conscience, and of the atonement required of us by Divine Justice. But, if the Old Law, that was written on tablets of stone, thus urges upon us the precept of the love of our neighbour, how much more will not the New Law, that was signed with the blood of Jesus, when dying on the Cross for His ungrateful brethren, insist on our observance of fraternal charity? These are the two Laws on which we will be judged. Let us, therefore, carefully observe what they command on this head, that thus we may prove ourselves to be Christians, according to those words of our Saviour: By this will all men know that you are my dimples, if you have love one for another (Luke viii. 35).Gospel – Matthew xv. 1‒20
At that time, the Scribes and Pharisees came from Jerusalem to Jesus, and saying to Him: “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the ancients? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread.” But He answering, said to them: “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God for your tradition? For God said: ‘Honour your father and mother’ and ‘He that will curse father or mother, let him die the death.’ But you say whoever will say to his father or mother, the gift whatever proceeds from me, will profit you, and he will not honour his father or mother, and you have made void the commandment of God for your tradition. Hypocrites, well has Isaias prophesied of you, saying: ‘This people honour me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and commandments of men.’” And having called together the multitudes to Him, he said to them: “Hear and understand. Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what cometh out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” Then came His disciples, and said to Him: “Do you know that the Pharisees, when they heard this word, were scandalized?” But He answering, said: “Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Leave them alone. They are blind, and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit.” And Peter answering, said to Him: “Expound to us this parable.” But He said: “Are you also yet without understanding? Do you not understand that whatever enters into the mouth, goes into the belly, and is cast out into the privy? But the things which proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart, and those things defile a man. For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man. But to eat with unwashed hands, does not defile a man.”Praise be to you, O Christ.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The Law that was given by God to Moses enjoined a great number of exterior practices and ceremonies, and they that were faithful among the Jews, zealously and carefully fulfilled them. Jesus Himself, though He was the Divine Law-giver, most humbly complied with them. But the Pharisees had added their own superstitious tradition to these divine laws and ordinances and made religion consist in the observance of these fanciful inventions. Our Saviour here tells the people not to be imposed upon by such teaching, and instructs them as to what is the real meaning of the external practices of the Law. The Pharisees prescribed a great many ablutions or washings to be observed during the course of the day. They would have it, that they who eat without having washed their hands, (and indeed the whole body, some time during the day) were defiled, and that the food they thus partook of was unclean, by reason, as they said, that they themselves had become defiled by having come near or touched objects which were specified by their whims. According to the Law of God, these objects were perfectly innocent. But according to the law of the Pharisees, almost everything was contagious and the only escape was endless washings! Jesus would have the Jews throw off this humiliating and arbitrary yoke, and reproaches the Pharisees for having corrupted and made void the Law of Moses. He tells them that there is no creature which is intrinsically and of its own nature unclean, and that a man’s conscience cannot be defiled by the mere fact of his eating certain kinds of food. Evil thoughts and evil deeds, these, says our Saviour, are the things that defile a man. Some heretics have interpreted these words as being an implicit condemnation of the exterior practices ordained by the Church, and more especially of abstinence. To such reasoners and teachers we may justly apply what our Saviour said to the Pharisees: They are blind and leaders of the blind. From this, that the sins into which a man falls by his use of material things are only sins on account of the malice of the will, which is spiritual — it does not follow that therefore man may without any sin, make use of material things, when God, or his Church forbid their use. God forbade our first parents, under pain of death, to eat the fruit of a certain tree. They ate it, and sin was the result of their eating. Was the fruit unclean of its own nature? No, it was a creature of God as well as the other fruits of Eden, but our first parents sinned by eating it because their doing so was an act of disobedience. Again, when God gave His Law on Mount Sinai, He forbade the Hebrews to eat the flesh of certain animals. If they ate it they were guilty of sin, not because this sort of food was intrinsically evil or cursed, but because they that partook of it disobeyed the Lord. The commandments of the Church regarding fasting and abstinence are of a similar nature with these. It is that we may secure to ourselves the blessing of Christian Penance — in other words, it is for our spiritual interest that the Church bids us abstain and fast at certain times. If we violate her law, it is not the food we take that defiles us, but the resisting a sacred power, which our Saviour, in yesterday’s Gospel, told us we are to obey under the heavy penalty which He expressed in those words: He that will not hear the Church will be counted as a heathen and publican.
