Genesis 1:20-2:4, Psalm 8, Mark 7:1-13
‘You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions’ (Mk 7:8). The words of our Lord spoken in today’s Gospel must be thought about very carefully.
What exactly does Jesus refer to when He says ‘human traditions’? How can we be sure today that the Church we are following is based on God’s commandments — all in its entirety, nothing short, nothing more? How can we be absolutely certain that the teachings taught by our churches today are not tainted or polluted by ‘human traditions’ through the course of time?
These are good questions that deserve good answers. They cannot be belittled or ignored.
Discounting the Old Testament, the only other tangible and ‘quantitative guarantee’ which Jesus left us are His Apostles. That’s why He spent three years with them.
The true Church can only be the one which was handed down from Christ to His apostles and subsequently passed onto their successors in an unbroken succession to this very day, year 2019.
The true church isn’t one with the highest number of followers. It isn’t the church with the most charismatic pastors. It isn’t the church with the best musicians. The Church that claims her founder is Jesus Christ has to also claim that she is the Apostolic Church.
Originally posted on Instagram.
1 thought on “Traditions of Men”
Fortunately, because Scripture is readily available to most people, we can distinguish between Scripture and tradition. Everything in Christianity is regulated by Scripture which was compiled by the Catholic Church in the fourth century (Vatican II’s Dei Verbum 21). We can read it for ourselves even if it is not presented accurately by a clergyman. This simplifies things in case we are confused about the contents of tradition.