Today’s Gospel
for the family
Today's Gospel + image + catechesis
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.”
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.”
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.”
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Illustration: + Mr. Josep Lluís Martínez i Picañol (Picanyol)
Today Jesus tells us where the evil in the World comes from: from within our hearts. His disciples do not understand, and that is why they ask Him to explain everything to them in detail… today we still do not understand: when anything goes wrong, somebody else is always to be blamed for it (it wasn’t me!) And if it is not “somebody else’s” fault, then the “system” is the one to be blamed, or the “weather”, or perhaps “society… no matter what, it is always something abstract and impersonal.
-Let us not lie to ourselves! Ask yourself: What is it that I am doing? What is it that lies deep in my heart?
