“All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”
All these evils come from inside and defile a person — the conclusion restates the principle with which the teaching began (verse 15): it is what comes out that defiles, and what comes out comes from within. The teaching is complete: the purity system's appropriate target is the heart, and the heart's defilement produces the moral failures that the law exists to prevent. External cleanliness without internal transformation is cosmetic — it addresses the symptom while leaving the disease.
Church Fathers on Mark 7:23
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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