Purity, impudity and misrepresented holiness
(Mk 7,14-23)
The Lord is for a comprehensive humanization. But in ancient cultures the mythical vision of the world led people to appreciate any reality starting from the category of ‘holiness’ as ‘detachment’.
The purity laws indicated the conditions necessary to stand before God and feel good in His presence - but in fact always dismayed, because [obviously] not totally complying.
At Mk’s time some converted Jews believed they could abandon the ancient customs and get closer to the pagans; others were of the opposite opinion: it would have been like rejecting substantial parts of the Torah.
In fact, the evangelist emphasizes that the problem is «in the Home» (v.17) that is, in the Church. Fraternity where the Master who came to free us from artificial obsessions, wasn’t yet understood.
Christ must insist on his teaching, now not addressed to strangers but to disciples [precisely] incapable of «understanding» (vv.14.18).
In this way, the Gospel rejects the distinction between the religious sphere of life and "contaminated" daily arrangement; a source of corruption. But normal, ground, harsh reality - therefore assessed distant from the ‘divine’.
Quintessence that vice versa does not intend to subjugate anyone.
The active presence of a new Order abolishes legal prescriptions and shifts the center of morality of our acts.
Here the teaching of Jesus is recalled: impurity does not come from outside [that is, from external to the inside]. That’s not the threat.
The realities of the world are never wicked and unsuitable - not even by the worship.
They become an abomination only by passing through decisions that are sacrilegious, because block life. And detachments that barbarize.
There is no sacred and profane in itself.
Mystery and Beatitude come into the world exclusively through the channel of dialogue and encounter with respect for intelligence, personal soul, and differing cultures. Not by pursuing entities of merit, nor misrepresented bottlenecks.
Here formal legalism kills the expansion of life and ideals: “impure” is what poisons the existence and spontaneous realization of people, their relationships, and creation itself.
Jesus frees the crowd of the voiceless and lost from the obsession of torments and fears, from always being on the defensive.
We are called to love the limits: they are the ground of preparatory energies of the real flowering - impulses and signs of our ‘task in the world’ according to the Newness of God.
Every Exodus values alternatives.
And we find the realization, the meaning of life, and gradually greater completeness, indeed by meeting our opposite sides.
We are not called to stare in one direction. There are others.
Anyone who intimidates the "inadequate" woman and brother threatens the life of the cosmos and makes the most sensitive and attentive people self-doubtful.
It is the imperfections that make us new, exceptional, unique!
Let’s therefore learn not to feel dismay at the fact that ‘we are not’ religiously "successful" - but Firstfruits!
[Wednesday 5th wk. in O.T. February 11, 2026]
