The last time we read from Mark’s Gospel was back in July, when we read from chapter 6 of Mark, how the Lord had sent the apostles on a missionary journey of healing and preaching, and afterwards, he invited them to a deserted place to pray and rest. So, St. Mark told us how Jesus and the apostles went off to deserted place, but all these people from the town followed him, and his heart was moved with pity because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
Now in chapter 7, this week, the Lord has left the deserted place and has gone back to work when he encounters a team of Pharisees and Scribes—these men who claimed to be the shepherds of Israel. And these guys were more like wolves-in-sheep’s clothing.
Unlike John the Baptist who humbly pointed out the Son of God to the people, the scribes and pharisees were basically doing the opposite. They were so blinded by their pride and their greed that they were acting as obstacles to God, rather than helping people prepare the way for Him.
And so, the Lord is going to has some pretty challenging words for these guys. He calls them hypocrites—sinners who refused to acknowledge their sins and their need for God. And there’s a big difference in the Gospel, isn’t there, between sinners who repent and those who refuse to repent. Sinners who come to Jesus and beg for mercy are shown mercy. But the pharisees and scribes, these guys, were sinners who refused to acknowledge their need for Christ.
Often, we find the Lord berating the Scribes and Pharisees for worrying so much about appearances, about externals, rather than dealing with the glaring issues in their souls.
Psychologists call this ‘exteriorization’…it’s when things are not well inside, so you spend your energy—inordinate amounts of energy— trying to control the things around you. I sometimes see this in my ministry in people who are grieving the loss of a loved one. Every little thing about the funeral has to be controlled and planned and perfect—every flower petal, every funeral song, every family member has to be standing in the right spot. So many of our addictions (to technology, shopping, substances) come from that same impulse to externalize.
But what’s needed in times of grief, chaos, and confusion, aren’t all these attempts to control external realities, what is needed is the opening of the mind and heart to God—who is the only real source of healing and peace. He’s the only one who can calm the inner storm—the pain and the sadness from wounds of loss.
When externalization becomes a habit, or a lifestyle, it causes real problems for individuals and families. When those unresolved inner conflicts are allowed to fester, they can turn into real emotional disorders that can sap the joy from life and turn into rage or depression. Wounds from our childhoods, wounds of rejection or jealousy that we don’t bring to Lord for healing, can cause us to rot from the inside out. Some people are not happy unless they are controlling other people, and that is a real soul sickness.
And that is the very soul sickness the Lord has diagnosed in the Pharisees and Scribes, and this is why the pharisees and scribes were failures as religious shepherds—out of pride they refused to acknowledge their moral disorders and their need for God to heal them, and spent all this time and effort worrying about and enforcing human traditions. Not that human traditions are bad—but it’s foolish to worry about these things when our souls are in danger of hell.
Today’s Gospel is an important Gospel because in it the Lord is stressing the importance of getting your priorities straight. No matter what you are going through, you need to make sure that your soul is right with God. God is waiting to relieve our guilt. But we have to acknowledge our sins and bring them to God.
This is done primarily in the Sacrament of Confession, the great unutilized Sacrament these days. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, if it has been more than a few months since your last confession, make a good thorough examination of conscience and get in the box. I have guides printed out back by the confessional for this purpose containing a list of sins that should be confessed, just like the list of sins Jesus offered in the Gospel today: “unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance”
Unconfessed serious sins are not only an obstacle for grace, not only do they jeopardize our eternal salvation, but they damage to our minds, bodies, and souls and relationships. They impact our relationship with God, and so they impact every other relationship.
The Lord takes sin seriously because he loves us so deeply. He died to save us from them, not just sin in general, but the very sins we commit in this life. And so we should welcome any opportunity to overcome sin that we are given.
Like the bronze serpent in the desert, God has given us the sacrament of Confession to relieve our guilt, and to experience the transforming love of Christ for sinners. Confessions are available here at St. Ignatius from 3:30 to 4:30 every Saturday, and Sunday morning after the 9am mass. Pope Francis said recently that the Sacrament of Confession is a sacrament of joy because through it you are able to encounter the Father’s love, “as children who run to receive the Father's embrace. And the Father lifts us up in every situation”
But even outside of the confessional, we do well to bring our resentments, fears, failings, challenges, stresses to God every day in prayer, so that our hearts may remain open to the help that can only come from him.
May the Lord deliver us from our pharisaical tendencies and lead us to the fountain of grace and mercy where he wishes to restore our souls, bring healing to our minds and bodies, and grant us peace and the fullness of joy for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
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