Preserving the fire of Tradition

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

Gustav Mahler, one of the leading composers at the turn of the 20th century, who recognised the tension between tradition and innovation and who attempted to bridge the gap between classical and modern genres of music, once wrote: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” What he meant by this quote is that, tradition is not remembering the glory of the obsolete good old days in a sentimental way but the passing of our culture, heritage and values, as living and organic things, to the next generation.

Today, our Lord confronts the scribes and Pharisees on the issue of the “traditions of the elders” which our Lord describes in a derogatory way as “human regulations” and “human traditions”. Critics of Catholic Tradition and promoters of theological innovation have often cited the above text to show that our Lord Himself had also condemned traditions as man-made. They accuse promoters and defenders of Catholic Tradition as being sentimentally attached to the past and practising an illogical “worship of the ashes.” But this crass and condescendingly shallow judgment is based on a simplistic reading of the text and their own prejudices. In fact, it is those who promote progressive innovation who are most often enamoured by an unthinking sentimentalism (sola affectibus - “feelings alone matters”) and who are actually the ones guilty of creating human regulations and human tradition through their innovation.

Let’s first consider the context of our Lord’s teaching in today’s passage. What were these so-called “traditions of the elders”? Like any law, the Law of Moses requires interpretation: how, when, for whom and in what circumstances are these regulations to be applied. Over the centuries, an oral tradition of legal interpretations had developed and handed down by generations of leading rabbis.

Originally, the interpretations were just meant to be interpretations of the Law but soon they took on the weight of the Law as well. For the Pharisees, the oral tradition was just as binding as the written Torah. It prescribed numerous and detailed rules of conduct for daily life, so much so, that you needed the special class of scribes who were living depositories of such rules to provide guidance and consultation. This is why the carrying out of these rules had become a burden that sometimes obscured the purpose of the Law. If our modern day ever-evolving SOPs can be a constant cause of befuddlement and fatigue in modern times, can you imagine the pressure and stress it would have given the people of our Lord’s time who had no access to search engines or social media platforms to ensure that they were not in breach of any rules?

The specific point of contention in this passage were the rules regarding ablutions to be performed before eating one’s meal. The scribes and Pharisees complained to the Lord that His disciples were eating with unclean and unwashed hands. In the chapter prior to this (Mark 6:35-44), we had the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes. Perhaps it was our Lord’s miraculous provision of bread in the wilderness (where there was no source of water for people to at least wash their hands) that occasioned this supposed controversy. The pettiness of the Pharisees can be seen in them missing the forest for the trees! The requirement of ritual purity in the Torah, was originally only applicable to the priestly class serving at the altar of the Temple, but the oral tradition developed by the Pharisees had extended this rule to govern the behaviour of all Jews at meals - making every meal a religious act, on par with the Temple sacrifice. Those who failed to observe these additional meticulous rules would be despised by the Pharisees and labelled as accursed and ignorant.

Rather than falling into the trap of validating their terms of reference, our Lord levels a counter charge, challenging the entire shaky edifice of Pharisaic legalism. He accuses them of being hypocrites (literally “stage actors”), people who only pay lip service to their devotion to God - their outward conduct does not correspond with the true state of their hearts. Obsessed with external ritual purity, their hearts and intentions were anything but pure.

Having quoted from the Septuagint version of Isaiah 29:13, our Lord delivers the punchline, which He repeats in two other verses to show emphasis: “You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.” It is a scathing indictment of His accusers’ whole approach to religion, in which the key contrast is between “God’s” and “man’s.” The will of God is supplanted by the agenda of man.

And this is what Sacred Tradition seeks to guard against – to prevent God’s revelation from being twisted by human machinations seeking to make it more palatable. And this is what innovation actually does – it puts aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.  At the end of the day, theological innovation seeks to undo the deposit of faith handed down by our Lord Jesus to the Apostles, to us. To reject Sacred Tradition is to reject Christ’s teaching. Innovation shows up man’s arrogance. When we innovate and attempt to alter the teachings of Christ in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, we are actually claiming to be smarter than the wisdom of God; that God’s revelation and guidance is inadequate for our salvation, and needs to be augmented and completed by our addition, subtraction or amendment.

Although heresies over the centuries can occupy any part of a spectrum of ideas and they may often disagree with each other, there is a consistent theme or action found in each and every one of them. Tertullian puts it this way, “In the Church, the rule of Faith is unalterable, and never to be reformed.” This is because Sacred Tradition is not just something the Church “makes up.” It comes from Christ. It is the full, living gift of Christ to the Apostles, faithfully handed down through each generation. To attempt to change Sacred Tradition would be as ridiculous as attempting to alter Christ. This is what the letter to the Hebrews wishes to caution us: “Remember your leaders, who preached the word of God to you, and as you reflect on the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same today as he was yesterday and as he will be for ever. Do not let yourselves be led astray by all sorts of strange doctrines” (Hebrews 13: 7-9). Heretics, according to Tertullian, “vary in their rules; namely, in their confessions of faith. Every one of them thinks he has a right to change and model what he has received according to his own fancy, as the author of the sect composed it according to his own fancy.”

As Christians, what is required of us is fidelity, not novelty. It is ultimately God who makes all things new, we can be assured of this. He does this not by making new things but by making all things new through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why Sacred Tradition is not just obsolete customs or fossilised teachings, but living and dynamic. Pope Emeritus Benedict reminds us precisely of this, “Tradition is the living river that unites us to the origins, the living river in which the origins are always present, the great river that leads us to the port of eternity. In this living river, the word of the Lord…: “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age”, is fulfilled again (Matthew 28:20).” It is the fire of this living river of Tradition that must be preserved.