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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Mk 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 (…)."

The heart and the purity of the heart

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, it appears —controversially— the fundamental question of the "heart": it is there —and not outside— where the plot of human history is "woven". In Mark’s Gospel we see the radical transformation that Jesus brought to the concept of purity before God: it is not ritual actions that make us pure. Purity and impurity arise within man’s heart and depend on the condition of his heart. And rather than a moral "rearmament" (effort), the crucial point is the encounter with God in Jesus Christ: He purifies us.

The word "heart" refers to the internal interrelation of perceptive powers of man, which also require the proper interplay of body and soul, since this is essential for the "totality" of the man. Without isolating intellect or will, man has to accept from God being both body and spirit, living the bodylines of his existence as enrichment for the spirit.

—The heart has to be pure, deeply, interiorly open and free to see God.