“Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?”
For it doesn't go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body. (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) — the anatomical argument: food enters the digestive system, not the heart — the seat of moral reality. The heart is where defilement originates (verse 21); the stomach is not. Mark's parenthetical in saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean is a retrospective theological application of the principle to the dietary laws — the application that Peter will need a vision to grasp (Acts 10) and that will reshape early Christianity's relationship to Gentiles.
Church Fathers on Mark 7:19
But the intention of the Lord in saying this was to teach men, that the observing of meats, which the law commands, should not be taken in a carnal sense, and from this He began to unfold to them the intent of the law.
For that man is a faulty hearer who considers what is obscure to be a clear speech, or what is clear to be obscurely spoken.
For some things are joined to others in such a way as both to change and be changed, just as food, losing its former appearance, is both itself turned into our body, and we too are changed, and our strength is refreshed by it.
Read all 10 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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