REFLECTIONS TODAY

Various religions forbid the consumption of certain types of food. For example, most Hindus do not eat beef, and some Hindus apply the concept of ahimsa (nonviolence) to their diet and consider vegetarianism as ideal. Islam divides foods into haram (forbidden) and halal (permitted). 

Jews follow a strict set of rules called kashrut, regarding what may and may not be eaten. Taboo in most religions is eating pork and blood. The Law of Moses provides that any animal that has cloven hooves and chews its cud, and fish that has fins and scales, may be eaten. They are kosher food (Lv 11:3, 9; Dt 14:6, 9).

 In today’s Gospel, Jesus sets the Mosaic food laws in the context of the Kingdom of God where they are abrogated. He declares moral defilement as the only cause of defilement. Nonetheless, the force of Jesus’ words was not fully realized among the Jewish Christians. Peter had to be given a vision of a large sheet of different animals and told not to call profane what God has made clean (Acts 10:15). 

The Council of Jerusalem decided that Jewish Christians refrain from blood and meats of strangled animals (Acts 15:29). Nonetheless, this remains the heart of the matter: true holiness is internal, not external. Food taken does not affect the heart, the spirit or conscience of a human being. 

What come out of the human heart and translate into action—the sins that Jesus enumerates—are what defile the human person.

First Reading • Gn 2:4b-9, 15-17 

At the time when Lord God made the earth and the heavens — while as yet there was no field shrub on earth and no grass of the field had sprouted, for the Lord God had sent no rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a stream was welling up out of the earth and was watering all the surface of the ground — the Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being. 

Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and he placed there the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made various tree grow that were delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it. The Lord God gave the man this order: “You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.” 

Gospel • Mark 7:14-23 

Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” 

When he got home away from the crowd his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, “Are even you likewise without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) “But what comes out of a person, that is what defiles. 

From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.

Source: “365 Days with the Lord 2025,” St. Paul’s, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 632-895-9701; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.