Yet we also live in a time when our society is becoming increasingly vulgar in its speech and behavior. Movies, talk shows, prime time sit-coms, and rap music have all become hotbeds for crudity, cynicism, and the demeaning and abuse of other human beings. Cursing and vulgarity are so common that most people simply take them for granted. People hear rap music and think nothing of it, but when Tipper Gore or Charlton Heston read the rap lyrics aloud to an audience of average citizens, they are scorned and forced to stop. What we have here is the strange irony which Jesus pointed out in today's gospel.
Many people seem far more worried about what they eat than about what they say.
And yet it is not the food that counts, when all is said and done, but those things which are spoken from the heart. When Jesus connects the heart with what is spoken, he is drawing on the biblical understanding of human anatomy which is different from ours. In the Hebrew tradition the head is associated with the will, the heart is where thinking and strategy originate, and the bowels are where feelings are located. In our time we have moved everything up a notch. We connect the heart with feelings, the head with thinking, and we have substituted heredity and environment for the will.