Homily for Tuesday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time

Jesus accused His critics of ignoring the commandments of God while insisting on the adherence to merely human rules. Jesus recognized that the religious traditions of His time did not always correspond to God’s will as revealed in the Scriptures, and as revealed in a much fuller way now by Jesus Himself.

The Church needs to be always watchful to ensure that its own traditions conform to God’s Word to us, especially as spoken by Jesus. Every so often our Church has to renew itself, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to purify its traditions so that they correspond more closely to the true spirit of the Gospel. We can understand the Council of Vatican II as a significant attempt to do just that.

In our own personal lives, too, we can get into traditional ways of doing things that are not always in keeping with the core of God’s message to us in and through the Scriptures. Our own personal tradition, whether it is our religious tradition or our tradition in the broader sense, is always in need of reform in the light of the Gospel. We need to keep on hearing the Word of the LORD anew, and to invoke the Holy Spirit to help us to do so.+