Commentary on the Gospel by Fr Luigi Maria Epicoco: Mk 7, 14-23

«Listen to me all and understand well: there is nothing outside man that, entering into him, can contaminate him; instead it is the things that come out of man that contaminate him ». If we were not naïve, today we would really treasure this revolutionary affirmation of Jesus. We spend our lives wanting to put the world around us in order, and we do not realize that the discomfort we feel is not hidden in the world but inside everyone. We judge the situations, events and people we meet by telling them “good or bad”, but we don't realize that everything God has done can never be bad. Not even the devil, as a creature, is evil. It is his choices that hurt him, not his creatural nature. He remains an angel in himself, but only by his free choice has he fallen. Orthodox theologians say that the pinnacle of spiritual life is compassion. It puts us so much in communion with God that we come to feel compassion even for the demons. And what does this mean concretely? That what we do not want badly in our life can never come from something outside of us, but always and in any case from what we choose within us:

«What comes out of man, this contaminates man. In fact, from within, that is, from the hearts of men, evil intentions come out: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deception, shamelessness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these bad things come out from within and contaminate man ». It is easier to say "it was the devil", or "the devil made me do it". The truth, however, is another: the devil can seduce you, tempt you, but if you do evil it is because you have decided to do it. Otherwise we should all respond like the Nazi hierarchs at the end of the war: we have no responsibility, we have only followed orders. Today's Gospel, on the other hand, tells us that precisely because we have responsibility, we cannot blame anyone for what evil we have chosen or not to do. AUTHOR: Don Luigi Maria Epicoco