Have you ever watched a sacristan at work? She places the freshly ironed linen cloth over the altar making one side hand exactly the same length as the other. She brings polished golden cups and plates to the altar. She is attentive to the cleanliness of the sanctuary and the beauty of its decorations.
We would be horrified if she put a wrinkled, dirty, plastic table cloth on the altar or set up a coffee mug and chipped saucer instead of the golden chalice and paten. In Church we do all we can to honor God and to make the setting look holy—reminding us that God’s table does not look like our own—that he is holy.
While cleanliness is appropriate in God’s house, is that what makes it holy? If the most conscientious sacristan spent her entire day straightening altar cloths, polishing chalices, and arranging candles perfectly, does she succeed in making the sanctuary holy?
Of course not. Sacristans do not generate holiness. God is the one who makes people and things holy. And how does he do this? Recall the words of the Eucharistic prayer:
“You indeed are holy, O Lord, the fountain of all holiness. Make holy, therefore, these gifts we pray by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall that they may become the Body and Blood of your Son.”
God makes holy by sending down his Holy Spirit to penetrate bread and wine so that they are filled with his presence. These simple gifts, as well as the gifts of ourselves, become holy because they have been overtaken by the presence of God himself, who alone is holy.
Jesus dealt with groups of Pharisees and scribes who tended to identify holiness with cleanliness. If we humans could become clean enough, with all of our “ducks in a row,” we would start becoming holy. And so they set out to try to make everything holy—clean hands, clean plates, clean houses. Underneath this mentality is the belief that, if we try hard enough, we can make ourselves holy.
Let’s read from today’s gospel passage (Mark 7:1-13).
“When the Pharisees with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they observed that some of his disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is, unwashed hands…So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, ‘Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal without carefully washing their hands?’”
This rugged bunch of fishermen were used to eating their lunch with dirty hands. They were not “couth” in the way that the scribes and Pharisees were—who didn’t have to work with their hands to make a living. Why didn’t a rabbi like Jesus make them change their lifestyles?
Jesus responded:
“Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me…’”
This band of religious teachers who had journeyed all the way from Jerusalem to check out Jesus, didn’t realize that they were in the presence of the Holy one of Israel—God’s Son made flesh. Instead of being awed by the presence of God, they stayed glued to their definition of holiness. They chose clean hands over clean hearts.
Jesus chose smelly fishermen, grimy tax collectors, and politically incorrect zealots to follow him. His presence and his words would make them clean, not on the outside, but on the inside. Today he sends his Holy Spirit on us to make us holy.
“Incline my heart, O God, to your decrees” (Ps 119:36).
