The Law leads us away from God

A reflection on the daily readings by Father Perry, for the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr.

By Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor

+ It is a fascinating truth and reality that two people can look at the exact same thing, and yet see completely different, even opposite, realities.

For example, take a person who is filthy, with sores and scabs covering parts of their body, and obviously poor and homeless and barely alive.

One person might see a lazy, useless person just taking up space.

Someone else might see a human person, a child of God, someone in desperate need of care and love, maybe even “another Christ.”

And so, part of it is the reality itself and the other part is the “seeing of that reality.”

Paul notes the issue of “seeing.”

And he notes that even the sophisticated Greeks and Romans, with their lofty philosophies, often saw things that led them to idolatries and superstitions.

They often were led by their seeing and their thinking into all kinds of Pagan practices.

At least as far as Paul saw it, they exchanged truth for lies.

They worshiped things — creatures, animals, inanimate things.

Their seeing could have — and Paul would say, should have — led them to the Creator of all.

Surely, all of creation should have led them to see the wondrous works of the Creator — should have led them to God.

But as Paul puts it so eloquently, “While claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.”

And it was, and surely would be, that this would only lead them to idolatrous emptiness and into sin, and far away from God as a result of, as Paul put it, their “vain reasoning.”

+ Jesus, perhaps, was dealing with something similar.

The Pharisees saw the Law as the thing that saved one.

The Law, perhaps, had become an end in itself rather than a way leading to God.

So, on one occasion at least, they observed that Jesus, “did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.”

And Jesus immediately named it. Hypocrisy!

Washing cups and hands and the outside of things was all important to them; it signaled their literal following of the Law.

But Jesus noted, “Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?”

And Jesus’ further commentary highlighted that the Pharisees were clean on their outside while filthy on their inside.

And further, it really did not matter to them because they could “make it alright” (in their mind and through their practices) by giving a few alms; again, fulfilling the Law.

One could ask if their practices of the Law led them to God or away from God.

By the way that they judged and condemned others, one could easily reach the conclusion just as Jesus did.

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Father Perry Dean Leiker is the 13th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com.