22nd Sunday Ordinary (B)/ Not that enters make you unclean.    DT 4:1-8/ Ps 15/ Jas 1:17-18, 21-27. Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23       Introduction         Two monks, Brother Francis and an elder monk, are walking down a muddy road on a rainy day. They came upon a lovely young girl dressed in fine silk, who was afraid to cross because of the flood and the mud. “Come on, girl,” said Brother Francis. And he picked her up in his strong arms, and carried her across the river. The two monks walked on in silence till they reached the monastery. Then the elder monk couldn't bear it any longer. “Monks shouldn't go near young girls,” he said, “certainly not beautiful ones like that one! Why did you do it?” “Dear brother,” said Brother Francis, “I put the girl down by the river bank, but you have carried her right into the monastery.”         Oftentimes the real motivation deep within ones heart matter’s most   Background   1. In the first reading, Moses sees observing God’s laws as an act of love. God offered His people the Land, and all the people had to do to possess it was to respond to God in love. The land was free for the taking. It could not be earned. God offered it before His people ever did anything. All God asks in exchange is love. For Moses, loving God comes first, and the observance of the law is only the external proof of loving God.     2. During his ministry, Jesus and his disciples traveled a lot. When tired and hungry, the disciples are probably not particular about washing before they take food with their bare hands. The Pharisees and the scribes question them. In turn, Jesus unmasks them as hypocrites, who pay lip service to the Lord with their observant of the law when their hearts are far from him.     3. Jesus’ frustration with the Pharisees was that they did not connect their worship with how they actually lived. If we do connect the two, our choice to accept God’s love will propel us to express our love in word and action.     Reflections     1. Although in our Liturgy we have a lot of external acts such as standing, sitting, kneeling as well us the use of vestments, nonetheless the church teaches that the internal dispositions are more important than the external expressions. In fact the Church also teaches in the Constitution on the Liturgy, that full, active, conscious participation in the sacred liturgy is the indispensable source of the true Christian spirit (#14, 30). There should be a clear connection between the things we say and the things we do, or, in the case of our ritual worship, we should reflect on the connection between the way we worship and the way we live. Ultimately, the best measure of our devotions is not what we do during the Mass but how we act outside the Mass.       A. St. James in the second reading tells us, “Welcome the word with its power to save you. Act on this word. If all you do is to listen to it, you are deceiving yourselves.” That is his way of saying that worship must lead to life, that externals must express sincere and honest internal dispositions. It is what is inside us the counts.       B. For people in a Hebrew culture, “word” has a twofold meaning. It does not only mean a concept, it also means an action. We approach this idea of a “word” being a concept and an action, when we pray, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” When we pray that the Lord will “say the word,” we are not only asking that God will say something, we are asking that God will do something.           2..  Sacraments are visible signs of invisible grace. The minister uses concrete visible things (like water and oils) and audible words as formulas, to express externally the invisible grace that God shares to the recipient. Even how much we appreciate the beauty of the visible ritual we should not miss the profound meaning and importance of the grace the goes with it. Whenever see the water in baptism, we should also recognize the beauty of the “Christian faith” that is invisibly shared to the child. When we appreciate the words of absolution in Reconciliation, we should not miss the love and mercy of God being given the penitent. As the book The Little Price used to remind us, “what is essential is invisible to the eye.”     3. Later in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus will summarize the Ten Commandments and all the other commandments into one (Love).  A person must love God with the whole of his being, and his neighbor as his very self (Mk 12:29-30). Love is the new law, set by God in the New Testament as shown by Christ. The old laws with all its external rituals were only prophetic preparations of what is to come. All the laws in the Old Testament were realized and were already fulfilled in Christ’s unconditional love on the Cross. It is now our internal disposition to love God to full that matter’s most.     Conclusion            Love is always identified with the heart, which is not just the seat of emotion, but of all the human faculties. All the food that we intake, goes directly to the stomach, and nothing more. But all our emotions and external expressions draw its energy from heart. Whatever acts we shown externally (good or bad) all comes from the heart. That can make us either holy or unclean. For Jesus, he wants us always to make a careful moral decision in dealing with life. And we should never forget to draw our prudent judgment . . . from a heart that truly loves.