Today, the Word of the Lord helps us to discern that over and above our human usages we have to place God's Commandments. In fact, as time goes by, it is easy for us to distort the evangelic advice and, willingly or not, replace the Commandments or engulf them in a punctilious meticulousness: “And on coming from the marketplace they do not eat without purifying themselves. And there are many other things that they have traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and kettles…” (Mk 7:4). This is why plain people, with their typical common sense, paid little attention to the doctors of the Law or to the Pharisees, who were putting more emphasis on their human speculations than on God's Word. To the religious hypocrite Jesus applies Isaiah's prophetic complaint (“Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me”: Mk 7:6).

When St. John Paul II expressed his sorrow in the name of the Church for all the negative things that her children had done throughout history, he did it by saying «we have been separated from the Gospel».

Jesus tells us: “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile” (Mk 7:15). What comes out of a man's heart, from a person's conscious seclusion, is what can make us bad. This malice is what harms Mankind and us specifically. Religiosity does not consist precisely in washing our hands (remember Pilate who delivers Jesus Christ to be crucified!), but in keeping our heart pure.

Speaking positively, this is what St. Therese of Lisieux tells us in her Biographic Manuscripts: “Considering the mystical body of the Church (...) I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was burning with love”. From a loving heart springs the well done deeds that help precisely those who really need help (“For I was hungry and you gave me food...” Mt 25:35).