The connection between Jesus’ teaching that proper understanding relates to understanding the Creator is already apparent in the prophet Isaiah. When Isaiah of Jerusalem confronts the wealthy elite with his parable about the unproductive vineyard, he diagnoses their main flaw as ignoring the works of the Creator:

Woe to those who demand strong drink

as soon as they rise in the morning,

And linger into the night

while wine inflames them! . . .

But what the Lord does, they regard not,

the work of his hands they see not. (Isa 5:11-12)

So when Jesus confronts the Pharisees during that dinner party, he recommends that they give alms as an antidote to their greed, for that is precisely the “impurity” of heart that prevents them from seeing that they are creatures of God and are ignoring the needs of the poor, their fellow creatures.

This is exactly what Pope Francis means when he challenges us to practice “integral ecology” by recognizing that the deepest pollution in our world is our failure to perceive the excluded and discarded among us are fellow creatures and members of the one human family.