Posted by The WORD in other words (2022) by Fr Atilano Corcuera SVD – Divine Word Seminary Tagaytay
Tuesday 5th Week in Ordinary Time
After so many years our high school class met for a reunion. There were lawyers, a doctor, priests, an NPA, overseas workers and teachers. A time came when the NPA and myself found ourselves face to face. We embraced, of course, started to bring each other up to speed and laughed reminiscing the old times.
When we began talking about our work, he promptly raised his hand and said, “Atilano, let’s talkabout everything except your church rituals. I don’t like rituals.”
I fondly remembered this classmate when I read the Gospel today. Here was a man who disliked rituals, while the Pharisees and the teachers in the Gospel loved them to the extremes.
What are rituals? Do they have a purpose? Let us distinguish between the daily rituals we do and the ones done in the name of religion.
First, even if we were not aware of rituals, we do them everyday. These are the automatic, repetitive actions we do to make life smoother. There are rituals before sleeping, after waking, when preparing for work or school, while cooking, etc.
Rituals in religion are expressions of what is going on inside one’s heart. Thus, when I kneel I express my humility and adoration. When I stand, I show my dignity as a child of God; when I raise my hands I desire to embrace heaven and touch the untouchable. If I perform a ritual without the concomitant content of the heart, the ritual is empty.
This is the whole point of Jesus’ pronouncement in the Gospel today. Without the heart, without the willingness to follow what God wants, vain are the rituals.
Question: What is more important, the ritual or the inner disposition?
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