Children of the Rosary 7 | Page 5

2. Jesus teaches the people that sin is what defiles a person. (7:14-15, 21-23) Let’s take them one at a time. 1. Jesus rebukes the scribes and Pharisees who don’t keep God’s Commandments. (Mark 7:1-8) We see that the Pharisees observed Jesus’ disciples when they ate. So they asked him, “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?” He 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; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” Here the problem of the scribes and Pharisees is not that they follow the human traditions, but that they don’t follow the Commandments of God. Anyone can cling to human traditions as long as: 1. They are not contrary to the Natural Law; and 2. They are not a higher priority than the Commandments of God. Number two is the problem of the scribes and Pharisees. 2. Jesus teaches the people that sin is what defiles a person. (7:14-15, 21-23) Jesus tells the people, “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile. From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.” Wait a minute; doesn’t some food make you sick and so defiles your body? The answer is yes. But this is not what Jesus about. What Jesus means is that, food cannot defile someone’s soul, it is sin that does. Sin is an offence against the law of God. So every time you sin you are offending our Lord. Another way to put this is, if you sin you are added weight to the Cross which Christ carried to Calvary and died upon. If we truly believe that our Lord died for all our sins that we might go to heaven, how much less would we sin and how much more would we go to the Sacrament of Penance! Let us ask our Lord though the intercession of our Blessed Mother for the grace to be truly sorry for our sins, not to do them again and to go to Sacrament of Reconciliation as often as we can. 5 Children of the Rosary