The prophet speaks on behalf of the Israeli people, it is in particular to these people that God manifested Himself and opened His love and His favor to them. But, certainly, it is not only the description of the happened event, but also a prediction, that can and needs to be understood in the spiritual sense. In almost over five centuries after the prophet Jeremiah, God will manifest His love to all people in the fact that the Son of God will come into this world to bring the good will - salvation. Let’s notice that and in the case of people, and in the case of every individual, God's lovingkindness is not the corollary of some kind of righteousness, of some merits, but comes only from God's everlasting love. It is still important to see that the lovingkindness "extends" to us, and is not imposed, and in order that it becomes for us reality, it is necessary to accept it.

All the most prominent religious systems—which, it should be noted, arose in warm climates—contain a concept of ritual purity and, conversely, defilement. This is usually understood to mean, quite literally, dirt: sweat, the dust that sticks to it, soot, and so on. All this leaves a person looking unfit to appear not only before the Most High but even before other people. The Old Testament is no exception, although the emphasis in the biblical concept of defilement shifts noticeably toward the moral sphere.

Christ does not reject the very concepts of defilement and cleansing. But, He says, it is not outward and accidental things that make you unworthy of the Almighty’s gaze, but what is done by your own heart. He contrasts the hygiene of the flesh with a kind of hygiene of the spirit: it is not dirt and soot that defile a person—a person, in Abraham’s words, is himself dust and ashes—but the active doing of evil. This is what spoils God’s design for the world; this is what disfigures creation.

It is natural that we, like the Pharisees, stumble over this, because it is far more convenient for us to establish outward cleanliness than to free ourselves from the evil in our own hearts. This is an essential checkpoint in the spiritual life: do you prefer appearance to reality?

But among other things, Jesus Christ’s words in today’s Gospel are an important revelation about the Father. Jesus explains to the disciples and to us that the Almighty looks at the essence of things. If you sincerely try to help your neighbor, it is the desire itself that matters in God’s eyes, not the weakness of its execution, because in that case He Himself makes up for your weakness. But if you do something vile, it remains vile in God’s eyes, however respectable its outward form may be.

For a person living many centuries after the catastrophe of captivity and the return from it, brought up in an entirely different culture, it is not always simple to understand this exultant joyful news that "God will have mercy on His people." At times it is just as difficult to accept such ideas about God, who now destroys cities and villages in anger, now forgives them and returns them from captivity. But one way or another, we all live in this world, where the mystery of suffering is replaced by the mystery of salvation. And that means this exultation, this joyful round dance in which "old men and young men together" and in which "sorrow is turned into joy," can become an expression of our faith as well, of our knowledge that God loves us no matter what.