7. The Novelty of the Heart

After Jesus’ return to Nazareth, his homeland where he grew up, the third part of the first great section in the Gospel according to Mark begins. This section culminates with the profession of faith of the apostle Peter. In this third part, the Gospel resumes with a summary and the announcement of the mission of the Twelve.

In chapter 6, verse 6, part two, we find a very brief summary: "Jesus went around to the villages in the vicinity teaching". It is a way to create a separation, of creating a passage from one section to another and taking up what was typical of Jesus: moving from one town to another and teaching. As we have already said, each of these parts begins with a narration of vocation: The first part narrates the calling of the first four; the second part speaks of the constitution of the Twelve; and this third part explains the mission of the Twelve. "He summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits.”

A mission begins. It is the first missionary experience. It is the so-called ‘mission in Galilee.’ During his public work, Jesus has sent the disciples ahead of him, to prepare the field; to prepare them for the time when they would have to work alone. This is also very important from a historical and methodological point of view. Jesus prepared the disciples as a teacher who prepares other teachers; and sent them to announce something. He offered them the content of the things to say and gave them the power for the things to do. He told them how to behave, what to do, and he communicated to them the power to do it very skilfully.

To allow some time to pass, from the moment in which the Twelve leave for the mission and the moment in which they return, the evangelist narrates the only episode in the whole gospel in which Jesus is not the protagonist. It is about the murder of John the Baptist. He had already said at the beginning that John had been arrested and Jesus began his ministry only after John was put in prison.

Now, the final drama is told. Herod had him imprisoned because John reprimanded him of his adultery, an illicit cohabitation since he was with his brother’s wife Herodias and, above all, this woman had forced and persuaded Herod Antipas to silence the prophet. However, Herod was afraid that he could not make up his own mind, and the auspicious occasion for Herodias came, on Herod’s birthday.

And when during the celebration, Salome, the daughter of Herodias, “came in and performed a dance that delighted Herod and his guests. The king said to the girl, ‘Ask of me whatever you wish and I will grant it to you.’ He even swore many things to her, ‘I will grant you whatever you ask of me, even to half of my kingdom.’” It is an almost burlesque reappearance of the book of Esther where the great Persian emperor makes the same promise to the queen who, however, wants to save Israel. Here, we have a king of a Jewish background who, instead, wants to ruin the prophet and the woman does not ask for salvation, liberation of life, but demands the head of the prophet John as a reward.

And Herod, reluctantly, a puppet as he was, lets himself be played on once more, and does what she asks him. John the Baptist ends his existence ingloriously, and his martyrdom is a tragic anticipation of what will happen to Jesus. Also in this case, he is the forerunner; precedes Jesus at birth, of the mission and also in death.

After this episode, Mark resumes the narration. "The apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done and taught." For a while, they were distant from each other, they had many things to share with each other, they were excited about their successes, but they were also tired and Jesus invites them to retire to a place apart to be able to rest, to be alone. But the people do not leave them alone. The crowds pursue Jesus. They also pester the disciples of Jesus to the point that they no longer even had time to eat. This is another typical picturesque brushstroke of Mark.

They wanted to rest in peace and solitude, but instead they are preceded by a huge crowd. And Jesus, who wanted to be at peace after receiving the tragic news of the death of the prophet John, starts talking to the people, and all day listens, speaks, heals. As evening falls, they are really tired and Jesus proposes to feed that crowd. It is a strange proposition.

The disciples would like to send them out, to go and buy something to eat, but the area is deserted. It does not mean that they are, nor will they be, in an area where there are no houses and, therefore, no shops. You have to walk a few kilometers to get to the shops. By now, it is late and Jesus invites the disciples to feed the people, starting from what little they have: five loaves and two fish. Jesus takes the loaves, says the blessing, breaks them, and gives them to the disciples so they can distribute them to the crowd; and they all ate to their fill of those five loaves that Jesus had broken after saying the blessing. Do you recognize a Eucharistic language?

The story of the multiplication of the loaves was given by the Christian community after it learned to celebrate the Eucharist and the fundamental verbs attributed to Jesus are the same: He took the bread, pronounced the blessing, broke it, gave it to the disciples. The disciples become intermediaries. They received that bread from Jesus and they passed it on to the crowds, and that bread is enough for many people. It is not an act of charity. He does not mean he feeds the hungry.

It is a gesture with which he shows his divine power: he is able to feed the desires of the people. to give satisfaction to man's search. Starts from what already exists and multiplies it. Or we could also change the actions and talk about a miracle of sharing. Jesus takes the bread and breaks it, divides it, shares it and that sharing is enough for everyone, therefore, the miracle lies in sharing the good, it is that divine power that works in Jesus, that is shared with humanity and it comes to satisfy everyone. The disciples are in the middle of this mission they receive from Jesus and transmit to others. Jesus wants to be alone.

After dinner, he retires to the mountain to pray; and the disciples leave alone with the boat on the sea in the middle of the night. Indeed, by now, when dawn is about to break, Jesus joins them walking on the water. It is another gesture of power. Jesus feeds man. Jesus dominates the power of the sea.

In biblical language, water, especially the sea, is a primordial chaotic symbol. They are the forces of evil and Jesus walks on water, that is, he manages to dominate the liquid element. It is the evil that dominates the world that must be trampled on by Jesus to reach his followers and come to their aid. They are scared. They take him for a ghost, but Jesus says to them: “Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!" It is the divine I Am, it is the proclamation of the nameless Name of God, the Lord of Israel, as revealed to Moses in the burning bush. ‘It is I.’”—now Jesus pronounces it. “Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!" Do not be afraid because I am here, I am with you, I am on your side.

It is a theophany, an appearance of God, a manifestation of the divine. Jesus is the complete revelation of God present in the life of man, in favor of man. When they reached the other side, he heals in the land of Gerasenes. We are again in a context of therapy, of help, but what follows in Chapter 7, is an important moment of catechesis.

We find the scribes and Pharisees who came from Jerusalem, gather around Jesus and pose problems for him. They contest the way his disciples behave. They say they do not wash their hands before eating, that is, they do not observe those rules of purity that the Pharisees, on the other hand, observed with great scruple. Mark, writing for the Romans who were not very knowledgeable with these Jewish religious rules, opens a parenthesis and explains that the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat if they have not washed their hands thoroughly, following the tradition of the ancestors; “And on coming from the marketplace they do not eat without purifying themselves. And there are many other things that they have traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and kettles and beds.”

All these rules of ritual purity were considered very important and Jesus surpasses them. He goes beyond those Jewish religious traditions, contesting a cult made up of doctrines that are human inventions; and he quotes a text from Isaiah in chapter 29, where he says: "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." There is a discrepancy between the lips that say things and the heart.

The lips are religious, pronounce all the prayers, the formulas, the rules, the norms, but the heart is far from God. This is a superficial, incoherent religious way that Jesus disputes, rejects, wants to overcome, and accuses them of neglecting God's command and observing the tradition of men.

We have to be very careful not to confuse the Tradition (with initial capital letter) with the traditions that are our habits. Tradition is the solemn passage that guarantees from the apostles to us, the preservation of the heritage that Jesus has left us; fidelity to the Gospel. The apostolic tradition that takes place in the Church does not coincide with our traditions, with our habits, with all those things we say that ‘we have always done it this way,’ so our religious practices are full of habits, some beautiful, others very ugly, but we repeat continuously because we are used to doing this. And the Pharisees did so, too, and they contest Jesus because he criticized them.

And Jesus also criticizes us saying: ’You respect your traditions, you keep doing these things because you're used to them, because you like them and you call them ‘religious’, but you do not observe God’s commandment. You do what you want, not what God wants, and you delude yourself that you are religious because you do your thing, repeat your habits but you look for yourself, you look for your taste, you look for your memories, and the things you like, that you are used to. They give you gratifications, which make you feel right.

Jesus' criticism of the Pharisees remains valid for all religious people who risk of becoming fixated on their habits and losing sight of God’s commandment.

Jesus, in this case, is revolutionary and reforms the religious scheme, so much so he amazed the disciples who ask him for an explanation of what he said: Jesus says that “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” The Pharisees were afraid to touch something impure. Why did they wash when they returned from the market? Because the dress, the hand, had touched worldly objects, the world is dirty; sinners are dirty and impure. If you touch them, you contaminate yourself, then you have to wash well of everything that you might have been in contact with while outside.

Jesus says: no, the dirt is not outside, you have it inside, in your heart. It is useless for you to continue washing your hands, convinced that others are bad and that they can make you dirty. It comes from within, your thoughts, your intentions, your words, your gestures are born from your heart. Rottenness is a revolution inside each one, so you have to heal your heart, not keeping external rules of religious appearance. It is necessary to change your heart in depth and Jesus offers precisely this possibility; it is he who gives a new possibility of a renewed heart.

Immediately after, Mark narrates the episode of the Syro-Phoenician woman, a pagan woman who meets Jesus, and asks for his intervention on behalf of her daughter who was possessed by a demon. Mark's insistence on this diabolical possession is seen again, evil ruins life.

This is a foreign woman who asks Jesus: "intervene for my daughter." Jesus recites the behavior of the fundamentalist Jews and says: “Let the children be satisfied first. It is not right to take the bread from the children to put it on the dogs... "I have not come, except for the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (says the Gospel of Matthew). ‘I have not come for the pagans. The children are the Jews and am I going to take the bread and give it to the dogs?’ (He is saying to that woman that she is a dog, "unfaithful dog." Who would not have been offended and irritated?) But that woman, instead of responding to that negative attitude with a controversy, knows how to turn the metaphor: ‘Okay, I am a dog, but in the family dogs also eat; crumbs and leftovers are given to them, to the dogs.’ She agrees to be considered a dog and notes that they, too, are fed. And, faced with this attitude, Jesus reacts with his style. He says, "Very well... your faith is really great." What you believe has been done, according to your wishes. That woman comes home and finds her daughter healed. The faith that this mother has freed her daughter from the power of evil.

It is the release even of a derogatory reaction. That woman, meeting Jesus, let her heart be healed, her heart is transformed.

Immediately after, Mark narrates the healing of a deaf-mute. It is an exclusive episode of the second evangelist and it is a particularly important episode, so much so that it has influenced the rite of baptism in the community of Rome because Mark wrote precisely for those preparing for baptism in the community of Rome and the healing of the deaf-mute is a figure that announces the salvific intervention in baptism.