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. —For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews, do not eat without carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the elders.
My philosopher -- I refer to John Macmurray with presumptuous familiarity -- observed that human beings cope with our lack of instinct with two very similar devices: habit and custom.
Every human act is made with knowledge and intention, and cannot be undone. As gun people like to say, "You can't unfire a gun." We may try to undo the unfortunate and unplanned consequences of an action, but there is no erasing the fact that it happened.
The human actor is responsible for every action and its consequences, including the unforeseen and unintended. Sometimes we only need to say, "Sorry!" or "My bad!" but sometimes we must atone for terrible things. MADD has rightly pointed out we are responsible for our "accidents," especially automobile crashes, because the driver chooses to drive while intoxicated.
Realizing that I am responsible for every act, and every failure to act, and every moment in which an action may or may not have occurred, I can suffer a lot of anxiety about, "What am I supposed to do now?"
We find relief from that anxiety only in 1) habit: I always do it this way; and 2) custom; this is how we do it.
If enough people do it this way it must be the right thing to do. If we have been doing it this way since long before I was born it is certainly the right way. If God told us to do it this way, we have absolute assurance!
Most of our actions are governed by habit and custom. We'd get nothing done without them. If I had to think and rethink and think again about every single action of every day, I wouldn't get out of bed.
So, it can be argued, customs and "traditions" are good things, as are habits. Unless they're not.
Sometimes my habitual act is precisely the wrong thing to do. And someone may come by and demand, "You idiot! Why did you do that!" Neither "I always do it that way!" or "I wasn't thinking." will relieve my responsibility.
Sometimes our customs and traditions must change. They were right but they're not right anymore.
With the Incarnation of God as a human being, with the appearance of the long-awaited Messiah, every habit and custom and tradition and familiar practice must be reexamined. As W.B.Yeats said of a lesser occasion "All changed. Changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born."
We should not be surprised that Jesus and (later) his disciples would demand a change of the old customs. In the light of the cross and resurrection, in the light of Jesus' mission to every creature in the universe -- personal, organic, mechanical, chemical, elemental and quantum! -- our sacred rituals, diet, work, relaxation and relationships must be refashioned.
His challenge remains in our time; no family, tribe or nation can say their traditions conform perfectly to the demands of the Gospel. No party, sect or church owns the Gospel. We have only to look at our sins to realize they are systemic, rooted not in faith but in our sinful habits of thought, word and deed. And the people unwilling to confess their sins or practice penance are most certainly doomed, pathetically and hopelessly hogtied to a toxic life style. People might try to wash away the damned spot of shared, systemic guilt by association, but we're all in this together.
Jesus severely warned his opponents of their traditional blindness in John 9: 41: “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.
We pray that we might exercise the kind of fidelity that announces the Gospel in every mode and medium that shapes human conduct. We can hope the nations might say of Christians:
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I love to write. This blog helps me to meditate on the Word of God, and I hope to make some contribution to our contemplations of God's Mighty Works.
Ordinarily, I write these reflections two or three weeks in advance of their publication. I do not intend to comment on current events.
I understand many people prefer gender-neutral references to "God." I don't disagree with them but find that language impersonal, unappealing and tasteless. When I refer to "God" I think of the One whom Jesus called "Abba" and "Father", and I would not attempt to improve on Jesus' language.
You're welcome to add a thought or raise a question.