Carmelite homily for Wednesday, February 12, 2020 – Lectionary 331 (Mark 7:14-23)
Saint Teresa of Avila’s best known work is called The Interior Castle, where she uses the image of ‘castle’ to be you or to be me. And that our journey is a journey deeper and deeper into the castle. At the very beginning of the book she writes, “We consider our soul to be like a castle made entirely out of diamond; a paradise where the Lord finds his delight.” In today’s Gospel we have all that comes out of the man defiles him; but what else is in the man but goodness and life and the Lord himself, where the Lord finds his delight. So I think the deeper we penetrate the castle, the deeper we understand ourselves, the deeper we know ourselves, the less defilement and the more aggrandizement, the more goodness, the more love, the more life. That’s the invitation of today’s Gospel.