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About the Author

Steve Reed is a member of the class of 2008. He is studying History with a minor in Art History and is the student administrator of the Manresa Retreat Program.

Thinking Out Loud

The great explorer and mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand, with companion Tenzing Norgay of Nepal, was the first man to successfully reach the summit of the imposing Mt. Everest. They did so on May 29th, 1953. After doing so, Hillary was asked by a reporter how one goes about climbing the highest mountain on Earth. He turned to the reporter and replied deliberately, explaining that in any task we undertake, any way of life that we choose, that "it's not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."

I found Sir Hillary's quote reverberating in my mind while I examined this week's Scripture. In Mark this week, Jesus' responses to the Pharisees seem to foreshadow Hillary's quip some 1,960 years later. Jesus says in Mark this week that "Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile." (Mark 7:15)

Growing up, I was taught the Christian aphorism in the bulletin-boarded classrooms of my parochial grammar school that "the body's a temple." A temple, more specifically, in which God dwells. This week's selection from James, like Mark, illustrates this point dramatically, as James instructs us to "put away all filth and evil excess and humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls." (James 1:21) Yes, the word planted in all of us.

So, as I went over and over the readings for this week trying to figure out how to tie all of it together, I finally decided what I really need to say.

What I believe I need to say is a hard message, but a worthwhile one. A message not truly of hope, but more of warning. This message is for all of us.

I believe that the message inherent in these scripture passage is rather absolute. Ready for it?

If we give up during our personal struggle with overcoming sin, then we lose sight of God, we have a harder time understanding ourselves, and ﾖ we might even lose ourselves.

The truth is that we all are viscerally linked together in this our individual and collective struggle with sin. Every hour of every day ﾖ yet despite this fact a great many people are content with modest complacency in the face of sin. In fact, don't many people try to mitigate the effects of their sin rather than just do the right thing? When this happens, isn't it more about them and less about God? And when it becomes less about God, isn't that when we begin to lose sight of God?

Instead, shouldn't we take God's message to us, present in readings like this week's, wholly instead of in part? Perhaps that scares a great many of us. Did God intend his Commandments to be heard and then deciphered as we wish, according to what is most convenient to us? I think that this week's reading from Deuteronomy answers such a rhetorical question quite clearly: "In your observance of the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin upon you, you shall not add to what I command you nor subtract from it." (Deuteronomy 4:2) Don't we all "disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition" sometimes? (Mark 7:8) And don't we lose ourselves in this process, by clinging to fickle whims and flexible maxims rather than to the steadfast rock of God's instruction?

Of course, confronting our own sins and making a true attempt to live by God's word is a tall, tall mountain to climb.

But in the end, isn't it "not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves?"

May God bless us all as we trudge up the Mt. Everests in our own lives.