The Pharisaic Ablutions

Book Fifth: Third Year of the Ministry of Jesus

Chapter I: The Sojourn of Jesus in Tyre and the Decapolis

I: The Pharisaic Ablutions

Only one year lies between Jesus and death; its opening days are dark and threatening.  Judaea, the foremost object of His care, now treats Him as if He were its bitterest follow.  " he would no longer walk there, because the Jews sought to kill him." Jerusalem was closed against Him; they were celebrating the Pasch there now, yet He could not show Himself among His people.  Galilee, in its turn, had withdrawn from Him, and Capharnaum had broken out into angry murmurs against Him.  The Lord had no other alternative except to wander through a Pagan territory, across the kingdom of Philip and into the land lying beyond the Jordan.  Meanwhile we shall see him still pursued from town to town, from one wilderness to another, even to the day when, with His Mission accomplished, of His own will He saw fit to deliver Himself into the hands of His executioners.
However, although Capharnaum had lost its first faith, it never conceived any such violent hatred for the Master Who had so recently been honoured and beloved by them as that displayed by Jerusalem toward Him.  Jesus still dwelt there in safety until the return of the pilgrims who had gone up to the Temple; but once the Paschal time was over, He could see that new numbers of spies were dogging His footsteps.  These were "some of the Pharisees and certain Scribes who had come down from the Holy City," full of the discussions to which they had been listening from their famous doctors, and thereby nerved with a greater zeal than ever to maintain the perfect observance of the cherished Ordinances.

The freedom which the Lord displayed in dealing with their Pharisaical precepts was, as we have said, a shocking and scandalous thing to those sectaries.  Now we are well aware to what excesses, in the matter of ablutions particularly, the Jews of this period, and notably the Pharisees, carried their scrupulosity.  Saint Mark tells us how before each meal, they were wont to wash their hands with the greatest care, scrubbing their clenched fists one against the other, immersing their whole body in water on their return from any public places, forever cleansing their cups, water jars, brazen pots, and the wooden parts of the couches on which their guests reclined.  And these interminable pains were not mere practices which one was free to observe or not; but, being taught as the Traditions of their ancient Rabbis, they were does rigorously enforced as any precepts of the Law.  To abide in the faithful practice of all these, it behoved one to go any distance for the necessary water, and the Rabbi Akiba was praised for incurring the risk of dying of thirst in prison rather than drink without having first purified his hands.  It is true the Sadducees who ridiculed this slavery to trifles, and often asked the Pharisees if they would not end by sprinkling the sun with lustral water; but all their ridicule could not rob the Scribes of their ascendancy; and, in the people's eyes, to violate one of their Observances still continue to be regarded as a heinous crime.

The Apostles, reared from childhood in reverence for the Doctors of the Law, now trembled before them; consequently, they were vastly disquieted when they saw some of these personages approaching the Christ with words of cold disapproval.

"Why do not your disciples follow the Traditions of the Ancients?  Why do they eat with unclean hands?"

Jesus would not allow these hypocrites to practise upon the simplicity of the Apostles.  He straightway took up the defence of His own, and withstood them, meeting reproof with reproof.

"And you," He said, "why do you transgress the Law of God in order to follow those traditions of yours?  God has said, ‘Honour thy father and thy mother;’ and yet you say: If a man says to his parents, I have vowed to God that which I might have bestowed upon you; the word ‘Corban’ once uttered, the vow is irrevocable, and you no longer permit the son do anything for his father and mother.  Thus you sets the Law of cats god at snore by your traditions.  Hypocrites!  Verily it was a view that Isaiah is prophesied:

"With their lips do these people honour Me,
"But there heart is far from Me.
"In vain to they on a Me,
"Teaching the doctrines and the precepts of men."

It was the first time that Jesus had so severely scourged the Pharisees, openly treating them as hypocrites and laying bare the inherent weaknesses of the doctrine.  Hitherto He had said nothing as to their claim that they were justified in giving the same force to the teaching of their Rabbis as to the commands of God; until now He had never tried to dissuade the people from believing that these observances also came from Moses, and thus formed a Second Law.  But it was time for Him to tell them plainly that only upon the ruins of the Commandments could the Pharisees succeed in establishing their Traditions.  And this Jesus did with such overwhelming authority, swaying all minds with such convincing power, that His enemies retired in confusion.

But the astonished crowds were also for withdrawing in their turn.  Jesus called them back to Him.
"Listen to Me, all of you," He said, "and understand.  There is nothing from without a man which, by entering into him, can defile him; but whatsoever proceeds from a man, that it is which renders a man impure.  Whoso hath ears to hear, let him hear." And leaving the people there He re-entered His dwelling.

This saying of the Christ was at once reported to the Scribes.  It touched them to the quick, discrediting as it did their interminable ablutions, which had no power to cleanse the sin-stained soul; leaving the people to infer that even those Mosaic purification s, which thus far Jesus had treated with respect, would soon have to give place to His simple Counsels of an inward purity of heart.  Deep was their indignation; indeed, their anger was so threatening that the frightened disciples hastened back to the Lord.

"Do you know," they said to Him, " how much the Pharisees were scandalised at this saying?"
Jesus met their anxiety with imperturbable serenity, and repeated that these regulations, invented by man and reprobated by God, must disappear.

"Every plant," He said, "which My Heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up; if a blind man guide another, both of them shall fall into the same pit."

His firmness restored peace among the Apostles, but their slow and uncultured minds could not manage to decipher the hidden meaning of those words which had so shocked and offended the Scribes.

"Lord," said Peter, in the others' name, "explained this Parable to us."

Though yielding to their request, the Master replied:—

"What!  Are you too, then, devoid of intelligence?  Do you not understand that there is nothing from without which, by entering into a man, can render him unclean, because it does not enter into his heart?  For it is from within, and from the heart, that there arise all wicked thoughts, — adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, avarice, malicious deeds, cheating, lewd thoughts, a covetous eye, blasphemy, pride, folly.  These are things which defile a man; but not to eat with unwashen hands, for that cannot defile a man."

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam