“For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,”
For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come — sexual immorality, theft, murder — the catalog of internal defilements begins with the heart as the source: evil thoughts (dialogismoi kakoi). The specific sins that follow fall into three clusters: sexual sins (sexual immorality, adultery), property sins (theft, greed, deceit), and social violence (murder, wickedness, envy, slander, arrogance, folly). All of them originate in the heart — the internal moral condition — rather than in external contact with defiling things.
Church Fathers on Mark 7:21
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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