TORAH OR TRADITIONS?

Loyalty is not sclerosis, but dynamism.

Gianfranco Ravasi

Why do your disciples neglect the traditions of the ancients? This is the question that he scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus. Let us think, among these, of the norm called netilat yadayim (washing of hands). Jesus responds annoyedly and polemically. He first cites the authority of the prophet Isaiah (29.13) to expose their hypocrisy. The scribes and Pharisees had reached the absurd point of neglecting God’s commandment to support their traditions. They preferred their codified prescriptions to the word of the Torah, traditions which do not always have a foundation of faith but only of culture. But a formal cult that does not involve the heart, is a mendacium, a public falsehood, a hypocrisy. The hypocrite, as is known, was the name of the choir leader in Greek theatre, the one who excelled above all. Hypocrisy therefore betrays the desire to excel. Most likely, in the biblical field, it derives from the Aramaic hanefa which means “perverse” and “wicked”. The hypocrite is therefore much more than a man whose actions do not coincide with his thoughts; he is an impious man, a blind man, inhabited by an altered and degenerate judgment, capable of doing evil. It is therefore necessary to watch over one’s heart, because it is from this within that good and evil come out. With this, however, Jesus does not deny the value of religious practices. He himself was very observant. He does not want them to be an end in themselves but to express the sincere search for God’s will. In Acts 1.24, Luke writes that God is the knower of the heart, so he sees the honesty and wickedness that pass through it. Of course, the heart needs to be educated, enlightened, healed. How? James, in the second reading, suggests it to us: through listening to the word of life, that is, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Commento a cura di d. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey