From Within the Heart!

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Gen 2:4-9, 15-17; Mk 7:14-23

Today’s Gospel highlights the heart, not the body, as the realm of morality.

When Jesus says that ‘nothing that enters one from outside can defile a person,’ he revokes the Old Testament laws dealing with ritual impurity and food. 

In simpler terms, Jesus means that food cannot defile a person because it does not enter the heart. Hence, food that is called unclean does not defile the inner core of a person. 

While brushing aside the possibility of food defiling a person in the first part of the Gospel, Jesus attributes real defilement to the contents of the heart from where evil thoughts and evil deeds proceed in the second part. 

By affirming the centrality of the heart for religion and morality, Jesus makes a clear distinction between the inner person (Forum Internum) and the outer person (Forum Externum). 

When Jesus affirms the centrality of the heart as the locus of morality, he reclaims the original intention of God in the Old Testament and condemns human wickedness that has reduced or confined defilement and morality to food and body, respectively. 

We are called to discover the profound meaning of the corrective that Jesus offers and allow the wisdom and truth to shape our lives. 

Let us pray that we may have the grace and courage to form our hearts as the real centers of morality. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar