Mass Notes: Inside Out

Mass Notes for Sept 2, 2018 (22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time)

At this Sunday’s mass, the gospel reading was from Mark and the preaching focused on the following passage:

Then Jesus called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that [by] going in can defile them [sic], but the things that come out of a person are what defile them [sic].” Mark 7:14-15

So it’s really apparent, that the lectionary’s grammar’s errant. Anyway. In Greek and Latin:

14  καὶ προσκαλεσάμενος πάλιν τὸν ὄχλον ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς: ἀκούσατέ μου πάντες καὶ σύνετε.  15  οὐδέν ἐστιν ἔξωθεν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου εἰσπορευόμενον εἰς αὐτὸν ὃ δύναται κοινῶσαι αὐτόν: ἀλλὰ τὰ ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκπορευόμενά ἐστιν τὰ κοινοῦντα τὸν ἄνθρωπον.

14 Et advocans iterum turbam, dicebat illis: “Audite me omnes, et intellegite. 15 Nihil est extra hominem introiens in eum, quod possit eum coinquinare, sed quæ de homine procedunt, illa sunt, quæ coinquinant hominem.”

So a better translation (certainly better grammar):

And again calling the crowd, he said to them: Listen to me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a man entering into him that can defile him (or make him common, bring him into common use), but what proceeds from a man, those things are what defile a man.”

The next verse, 16 – omitted in many editions – is perhaps worth mentioning: “If someone has ears for hearing, let him hear.” In other words, pay attention, think: the meaning here might not be obvious, as indeed it was not to Jesus’ disciples, as we can read in the ensuing passage.

Preaching on the passage above, Fr. D put up his gloss on the overhead, which read something like: “Holiness is not about what is outside, it’s about what is inside.” That, he assured us, is what Jesus was saying in the day’s gospel reading. But is that right?

He went on to apply his claim to liturgical postures – the rubrics, the red print in the missal. He talked about how the postures prescribed have changed from time to time – he reminisced about the battles of the 70’s – but assured us that it’s really not something to be concerned about: We should just do what we’re told to do and understand that it really doesn’t matter, because what matters is holiness and, again, “Holiness is not about what is outside, it’s about what is inside.”

But there are serious problems here. First, some questions about the liturgy: Is Father saying that there is no rhyme or reason behind the postures? that the postures don’t actually mean anything, aren’t meant by their nature to express anything? that in themselves they are meaningless and that by assuming them we are merely (supposed to be?) carrying out acts of blind obedience to arbitrarily prescribed ritual? That seemed to be what he was implying.

But are a man’s worship postures something that “enters into him,” or something that “proceeds from him”? In a sense they may be the former – they are received by him as prescriptions – but as enacted they are certainly also the latter, something proceeding from him. So are they really supposed to proceed from him merely as acts of blind obedience to the inscrutable, arbitrary prescriptions of whimsical liturgical legislators? I think not. I think such an attitude is in fact a corruption of the meaning of liturgy. And preaching so as to encourage an anti-intellectual, anti-understanding, nominalistic view of the liturgy may well be something that “proceeds from a man and defiles him [the preacher].” And when this preaching is received, it defiles also the understanding of those who receive it, as well as defiling their consequent participation in the liturgy, rendering it vain, empty, inert, mindless, heartless. I think that is the actual claim that Jesus is making in the gospel, about the scribes and Pharisees’ vain worship through observance of the precepts of men, while their hearts are far from God.

When Fr. D announced that Jesus was telling us that holiness is about what is inside, not about what is outside, it seems he failed to consider a very obvious question: So what is the relationship between what is inside and what is outside?

If we look at what Jesus actually says, it seems clear that Father’s simplistic dichotomy won’t do at all. Jesus is not talking about what is inside versus outside a man, he is talking about what enters a man – through his mouth – versus what proceeds from him. What really matters is what proceeds from him, Jesus says, or as the lectionary translates it, “things that come out of a person” – so Jesus says pretty much the opposite of what Father claimed! Of course what is inside the heart matters too, but it matters precisely in that it is from the evil thoughts of the heart that all kinds of evil come out: v.20: “what goes out (L. exit) of a man, that defiles him.” Jesus mentions (vv.22-23) fornication, theft, murder, etc. – and (ironically) also foolishness (ἀφροσύνη, stultitia), for example, the foolishness of saying “what’s inside matters and what’s outside doesn’t.”

Omitted from the lectionary reading are v.18-19: “Do you not understand that nothing outside a man entering into him can defile him? Because it does not enter into his heart…”

In Thomas Aquinas’s ‘golden chain’ (Catena aurea) collection of patristic commentaries on Mark’s gospel, he gives the following gloss:

It is said “into his heart,” that is, into the mind, which is the principal part of the soul, from which the whole life of man depends; wherefore it is according to it that it is necessary to esteem a man clean or defiled; and thus those things that do not enter into the mind cannot produce defilement. [And likewise, it would seem, those things that do not enter into the mind – like a sound understanding of the liturgy or of the scriptures – cannot produce holiness.] Foods, therefore, since they do not enter into the mind, by their nature cannot defile a man [or make him holy]; but the inordinate use of foods, which comes from disorderedness of the mind, pertains to a man’s defilement.

Finally, in regard to foolishness (stultitia), I think it worth noting the two interpretations Thomas lists. Foolishness is “injustice towards neighbor.” Or it is when someone “does not discern rightly about God: for it is opposed to wisdom, which is a grasp of divine things.” Now it’s not often (maybe ever!) you’ll hear preaching against foolishness – more often, perhaps, you’ll hear preaching that is foolishness – but it’s important to recognize that foolishness really is one of the things that we are required to avoid, by a concerted effort of the will. Indulging in it is unjust towards our neighbors and alienates us from God. It is one of the things that defile us from the inside out.