"Then, some Pharisees, and teachers of the law, who had come from Jerusalem, gathered around JESUS. And they said to HIM, 'Why don't YOUR disciples follow the tradition of the elders? For they, they don't wash their hands before eating?'
JESUS then called the people to HIM, and said to them, 'Listen and understand: What enters into the mouth does not make a person unclean. What defiles a person is what comes out of his mouth.'
After a while the disciples gathered around JESUS and said, 'Do YOU know that the Pharisees were offended by what YOU said?' JESUS answered, 'Every plant which MY heavenly FATHER has not planted shall be uprooted. Pay no attention to them! They are blind, leading the blind. When a blind person leads another, the two will fall into a pit.'" - Matthew 15:1-2. 10-14
(They don't wash their hands. The Pharisees uphold something that is excellent and which we ourselves practice. JESUS' vision, however, goes further: all these good customs and religious practices [feasts and meditations included] easily become a smoke screen, hiding the essential from us: a constant readiness to listen to GOD's call, a simple trust in HIS mercy which alone can save us.
Using only human criteria, human societies are not able to distinguish good from evil.
For the Jewish people, the worship of GOD was everything and they felt very much concerned about exactly who and what things were worthy of being part of this worship. Thus they made a distinction between the clean and the unclean. JESUS shows that true purity is that of the heart.
It could be that the code for correct behavior in our society and its numerous goodwill institutions be just a modern way of distinguishing the pure and the impure. In the Church itself, in past centuries, there has been a tendency to attribute to sacred ministers a "purity" that reserved to them the handling of sacred things. It is one of the reasons why in the Middle Ages Communion was not given in the hand, as had been the custom for over ten centuries.)
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