Navarre Bible Commentary:Wednesday, 5th Week in Ordinary Time

Source: Jack Olson

Mark 7:14-23

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

14 And he called the people to him again, and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.”[a]17 And when he had entered the house, and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on?”[b] (Thus he declared all foods clean.)20 And he said, “What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.”

Footnotes:

1. Mark 7:15 Other ancient authorities add verse 16, “If any man has ears to hear, let him hear”
2. Mark 7:19 Or is evacuated

Cited in the Catechism:  In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Blessed John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium."  He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraphs 574, and 1764.

Commentary

7:15. See the RSV note [above].

7:18–19. We know from Tradition that St Mark was the interpreter of St Peter and that, in writing his Gospel under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he gathered up the Roman catechesis of the head of the apostles.

The vision which St Peter had in Joppa (Acts 10:10–16) showed him the full depth of what Jesus teaches here about food. When he returns to Jerusalem, St Peter himself tells us this in his report on the conversion of Cornelius: “I remembered the word of the Lord” (Acts 11:16). The now non-obligatory character of such prescriptions laid down by God in the Old Testament (cf. Lev 11) would have been something St Peter included in his preaching. For interpretation of this text see also the note on Mt 15:10–20.

7:20–23. “In order to help us understand divine things, Scripture uses the expression ‘heart’ in its full human meaning, as the summary and source, expression and ultimate basis, of one’s thoughts, words and actions” (St Josemaría Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, 164).

The goodness or malice, the moral quality, of our actions does not depend on their spontaneous, instinctive character. The Lord himself tells us that sinful actions can come from the human heart.

We can understand how this can happen if we realize that, after original sin, man “was changed for the worse” in both body and soul and was, therefore, prone to evil (cf. Council of Trent, De peccato originali). Our Lord here restores morality in all its purity and intensity.

Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

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