Wednesday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 10, 2021

Mark 7:14-23

Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.”  When he got home away from the crowd his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, “Are even you likewise without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) “But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him. From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass follows immediately after that for yesterday’s Mass.  The Lord Jesus had answered the complaint made by the Pharisees that his Apostles did not ritually purify their hands before eating, as though they were priests offering sacrifice in the Temple.  The Lord rejected their attempt to force people to abide by their interpretation of the Mosaic Law which in fact contradicted that Law.  Now, he seizes the occasion to teach the Apostles and the crowd the true meaning of impurity, as opposed to the ritual impurity that so concerned the Pharisees.

“Hear me, all of you, and understand.”  The Lord gains the people’s attention and makes it clear that what he is about to tell them is important for them to hear.  He has just overthrown the false teaching of the Pharisees, but he is not interested in scoring points off them.  His zeal for the souls of all people compels him to speak of the evil of sin, and the evil caused by sin, for their own good.  “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.”  This must have come as a great revelation at the time.  Jewish life was bound up with exterior actions, performing a prescribed act correctly and at the right time.  These actions, including circumcision, keeping the Sabbath, and the purity laws, identified a person as a Jew.  Proper behavior, then, came out of a sense of duty, and of the desire to belong to the Chosen People.  The Lord spoke during his Sermon on the Mount that attitude and rightness of intention mattered at least as much as exterior actions, identifying lustful thoughts as acts of adultery if no actions outside the mind resulted.  He continues that line of teaching here, emphasizing the evil that afflicted the sinner long after the sin was committed.

“Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?”  The Lord rephrases his pint here as the Apostles show slowness to understand.  He compares sin to food.  A person cannot be defiled by another’s sin, nor by thoughts or temptations that arise contrary to a person’s will — from “the outside”, as it were.  The food enters the body and then leaves it as waste.  “But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him.”  That is, that which originates within a person defiles that person.  Jesus thus shows the full meaning of Proverbs 26, 27: “He who digs a pit shall fall into it.”  The sinner hurts himself more than he hurts another by his sin.  Lustful thoughts, as thoughts, do not harm another person directly.  They do, however, defile the person who consents to them.

This word, translated here as “to defile”, has the sense of “to pollute”, and it can mean “to make ritually impure”.  That is, such a person could not participate in Temple worship and would have to keep apart from others until he had performed the proper washing rituals.  This was a very serious matter for the Jews.  This impurity made a person incapable of the holy.  For us, it is a sign fulfilled when the Lord Jesus was driven outside the camp of his people with their sins upon him (cf. Leviticus 16, 21-22), in fact making him sin (2 Corinthians 5, 21).  The ritual impurity of the Jews is shown to be the sign of the reality of mortal sin.  

The Lord lists these mortal sins: “Evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.”  These corrupt and pollute the person who commits them and the effect does not vanish after the sin has been committed, but remains.  It is necessary to repent of our sins, to hate them, to confess them, and to do what we can to make up for them.  Failure to do so makes us unworthy of the holy — the reception of the Blessed Sacrament, and ultimately the life of heaven.