Clean of Heart

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the Psalms we’re told, “Create a clean heart in me, O God” (Ps. 51:10). It's like a cry coming from the whole of humanity.

In the New Testament we’re told, “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8).

A lot of importance in Scripture is given to this business of being clean in the heart.

If you go to the end of a runway or to an airport and you watch the planes taking off, you might be surprised how all that metal gets up into the air: so many people, sometimes a couple of hundred—all their luggage, all the petrol on board—and yet every time, it gets up into the air.

You might ask: What is it that makes the plane go up? You could think initially of the engines, but if it was just the engines, the plane might keep going at the end of the runway.

What makes the plane go up when it gets to a certain speed are the wings. Nothing flies on this planet without wings.

St. Josemaría liked to say that we also need wings to our soul to make our soul fly high, way above the things of this world—and that those wings are supplied by the virtue of purity (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 177).

It's a virtue whereby we place order in our sexual appetite in relation to all of our senses, eyes, ears, touch, et cetera.

We place an order there that was disordered with original sin.

Our first parents had the gift of rectitude, whereby all their passions were perfectly subject to their reason, which was perfectly subject to God. Then with original sin, they lost that gift. Their desire for pleasure became disordered.

We have what's called a disordered concupiscence. We tend to look for pleasure in the wrong ways or in disordered ways. We have to impose order there.

There are human and there are supernatural means to live the virtue of purity.

One of the human means is to distance ourselves from things that cause problems, that causes temptations. It could be on our phone, could be conversations, could be a movie, could be certain people or certain places.

Our Lord says in Scripture, “If your hand is an occasion of sin to you, cut it off. It is better to go into life maimed than having two hands to go into the eternal fire” (Matt. 18:8).

Our Lord is very clear. In this area there's no dilly-dallying. Be very radical. Cut it off. Change your way of thinking or behaving. Change your lifestyle in order to grow to be clean of heart, because that's a great goal to have in your life.

The virtues of purity, chastity, modesty, virginity, celibacy are all very much tied up with human love.

Our Lord wants us to have a noble, pure love which is one of the most beautiful realities on the planet, a reflection of divine love. That's why the devil has messed it up so much for young people.

There are certain key ideas that we have to get right: the purpose of human sexuality. Somebody said once that we suffer in the world not so much from an excess of sex, but from a lack of true human sexuality, which is beautiful, which is noble, which is ordered.

Our Church teaches the truth, beauty, and meaning of conjugal love—the only Church on the planet that does so. In the course of our life, we need to come to learn what those things mean, how to practice them, how to spread those ideas around.

St. Paul says to the Romans, “I urge you then, brothers, remembering the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God; that is the kind of worship for you, as sensible people” (Rom. 12:1).

We offer our bodies as a living sacrifice.

One of the first ways to acquire this cleanliness of heart is to ask God for it: ‘Give me that gift. Help me to be cleaner in my thoughts, in my imagination. If ever any unclean thoughts will enter my mind or my imagination, help me to dismiss them immediately.’

Sometimes you have to change your thinking like you change the channel on a TV set. Press a new button, get thinking about something different. Change your focus.

All the saints talk about the guard of the eyes. Many bad things can enter through the eyes. We need to guard our eyesight occasionally. Don't let our eyes focus on things that are not right.

We also have to guard the heart. “Our heart can turn traitor,” said St. Josemaría. It can fly off in a million different directions. He talked about keeping it “locked with seven bolts” (cf. J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 188).

There is a story of crown jewels that are kept in—I think—Edinburgh Castle. They are in a glass case in this castle that is electrified with an alarm. Outside that there are guards guarding the crown jewels. And outside that, there are more guards and more alarms. And then there is a courtyard where dogs roam at night.

There are big high walls of the castle, and outside the castle wall there is a moat. If anybody tries to steal the crown jewels, they have a pretty difficult task. They have to get through various levels of security.

The Queen doesn't carry the crown jewels around in her handbag and give it to the first pretty face that she sees. They are protected; they are guarded.

If that is the way that human treasures are guarded on earth, how must we guard the treasure of our heart? Keeping it locked with seven bolts. And if any of those bolts become loose, we jam it shut again.

St. Paul says, “Do not model your behavior on the contemporary world, but let the renewing of your minds transform you, so that you may discern for yourselves what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and mature” (Rom. 12:2).

Very interesting words of advice: Do not model yourself on the contemporary world. We are not just here to do what everybody else is doing, thinking the way they’re thinking. We’re on a different plane.

We are called to be a bride of Christ, to have that clean heart, and keep it clean. If ever it ceases to be clean, we go and clean it again in the sacrament of Confession—great means, other means to live this virtue well—frequent Confession.

We accuse ourselves of small things, of lack of the guard of our heart, of our imagination, our thoughts. Our Lord has warned us, “Out of the heart of man come all sorts of ugly things: envy, jealousy, lust, anger” (cf. Mark 7:21-23).

We shouldn't be surprised at the temptations that come or what the devil may throw at us. We are human. Our Lord also allowed Himself to be tempted (Matt. 4:1-11). But we have the remedies.

St. Paul talked about “a thorn in the flesh” that was given to him, “a messenger from Satan to batter me and prevent me from getting above myself” (2 Cor. 12:7).

We all have some sort of a thorn in the flesh that we have to be careful with. “About this, I have three times pleaded with the Lord that it might leave me.”

‘O my Lord, take it away from me. I don't want this thing.’

“But Our Lord answered and said, ‘My grace is sufficient for you’” (2 Cor. 12:8-9).

We have all the graces, all the help to lead a clean life—to live in the presence of God, to live in the state of grace all the days of our life.

One of the worst things that could happen to us is to fall into the state of mortal sin. Sin is the greatest evil, the only real evil.

We have to flee from mortal sin, as from the devil himself. If ever we have the misfortune to fall into that situation, we should try and get out of that situation within twenty-four hours. Find a priest, look for Confession.

With that we restore our peace, our joy, our happiness, and our union with God.

Our Lord has told us that He will come “like the thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2). Today might be the day that He will call us. He wants to find us prepared, in the state of grace, with our lamps burning brightly (Luke 5:35).

The Church has always taught that if we die in a state of mortal sin, we can go to hell for all eternity (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 1035).

While purity is not the most important virtue (charity is the most important virtue), and the sixth commandment is the sixth commandment (it’s not the first), at the same time purity is an important virtue—one we have to take a lot of care with, and fight, and have a lot of optimism.

“‘My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ It is, then, about my weaknesses that I am happiest of all to boast, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor. 12:9).

The power of Christ. We have all the means. “That is why I am glad of weaknesses, insults, constraints, persecutions, and distress for Christ's sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).

With the passage of time Our Lord may let us see our weakness; help us to see where we have to fight in certain areas, where our hearts get a little bit loose, our thoughts go a little bit astray; where we have to be careful, so that we take care of that cleanliness of heart.

I met a man once in Mombasa and asked him what his profession was; what he did for a living. He told me he was a tea taster. I'd never met a tea taster before.

I was thinking my mother would have loved that job. And I was thinking if he's a tea taster, he has to be able to distinguish between the different types of tea, the qualities of tea, that come from different parts of Kenya: Kericho gold, and Moringa silver, and all the others.

He must have to have a great sensitivity with his taste buds. He must have to take very good care of them.

After the tenth sip of tea on a Monday morning, he might feel like having a brandy or smoking a cigar or chewing bang or something—that could play havoc with his taste buds—the sensitivity there.

Likewise, we have to be careful with the taste buds of our soul, not allowing the taste buds of our soul to come in contact with anything that might contaminate them and make them lose their sensitivity for nobility, for beauty, for the things of God.

“Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8).

We also know that the devil is very clever. Genesis says, “he's more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made” (Gen. 3:1).

The devil knows where we're weak. He knows how to come at us. He tries to convince us that we're strong, that we can handle certain situations or temptations, or allow ourselves into certain situations.

In dealing with people of the opposite sex we have to be particularly careful to guard our heart; not to wander into situations or places where we could be compromised.

There was a young fellow once who ran into a police station and said, “Quick, quick, my father has been fighting for over an hour!”

The policeman said, “Over an hour? Why didn't you call me before now?”

And the kid said, “Well, in the beginning, he was winning.”

Sometimes that's what happens with temptations. The devil allows us to go a few rounds; allows us to think that we're strong, that we can handle the situation, when in reality he's preparing for the knockout blow.

Lord, give me the grace to fight; to fight to stay always in the state of grace; to see mortal sin as the worst possible evil that I could fall into—and to realize that I have your graces to help me in this battle.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the chapter on purity is entitled “The Battle for Purity.” It's interesting that the Church places those words there.

It reminds us that it's a battle where we have to fight, but a battle worth fighting and a battle worth winning.

“Do you not realize,” says St. Paul, “that you are the temple of God with the Spirit of God living in you? If anybody should destroy the temple of God, God will destroy that person because God's temple is holy; and you are that temple” (1 Cor. 3:16-17).

One of the great means we have to grow in strength to be able to live this virtue is to receive Holy Communion frequently. In every Communion we get the grace of God to be able to fight a bit better.

We're lifted up onto a new supernatural plane. We get an influx of the supernatural virtues—faith, hope and charity—but also an increase of all the moral virtues that help us to fight that battle a bit better, so that we take care of our wings.

We're able to fly high, spiritually speaking, way above this world and look down upon it from a different height, where everything looks very different. We see things as God sees them.

“So that you, too,” says St. Peter, “may be living stones, making a spiritual house as a holy priesthood to offer the spiritual sacrifices made acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:5).

One time I saw a picture of a KLM jumbo jet that was being transported along the canals of Amsterdam. This jet had flown all over the world, but it had reached the number of miles that jets are allowed to fly, and now it was being retired to be a restaurant.

It was being moved from the airport to its final resting place. In order to move it, it had the wings cut off.

This picture was of this jumbo jet being transported along the canals of Amsterdam through a housing estate. Of course, the jumbo jet dwarfed all the houses. The jumbo jet looked enormous with the houses beside it.

It was a very unusual photo because you saw all these houses and in the middle of them was this jumbo jet, towering over the houses.

But there was also something a little bit sad about it.

Here was this enormous jumbo jet that had given wonderful service. It transported thousands of people all over the world. Now its flying life was ended. It had no more wings.

Wings are very important. We need those wings—to treasure them, look after them.

We can't allow our wings to get caked with mud. Birds that get caked with mud or oil or something can't take off anymore. They get stuck to the ground.

We can try to foster in our soul, in our heart, that desire for greater purity, that clean heart that the whole of humanity has yearned for, down through history, as reflected in the Scriptures.

St. Paul says, “You were to put aside your old self, which belongs to your old way of life and is corrupted by following illusory desires” (Eph. 4:22).

There's an old person there inside us that we have to change; come to a new spiritual maturity; learn how to love in very concrete ways and what that means.

We have to spread that message all over the place. We know that the atmosphere that we move and work in, people that we meet—we often have to try and lift up that atmosphere.

Lift it up to a new supernatural, spiritual plane. Help conversations to be cleaner. Help the lives of the people around us also to be cleaner, so that they can be clean of heart.

“Your mind,” he says, “was to be renewed in spirit, so that you can put on the new self that has been created on God's principles, in the uprightness and holiness of the truth” (Eph. 4:23-24).

Lord, help me to learn what this virtue is and what it means.

It means to love as Christ loved. Virtues of purity, chastity, modesty, virginity: they’re not an imposition. They are ways of loving.

The world tries to tell us that you have to be irrational to be chaste, or that chastity drives you nuts or makes you nuts, or there's something wrong with you if you're trying to live those virtues.

But we know that's not the case. These virtues—purity, chastity, modesty, virginity—can be the key to profound happiness and joy, for single people and for married people. It's worthwhile to work at that business of self-mastery, self-control.

Where do we ever hear those words? Very rarely.

We need to be in control of our thoughts, of our imagination, of our memory, of our habits, so that we change those habits if necessary.

One writer says, “You can't play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal” (Dag Hammarskjöld).

There's an animal inside each one of us, a tiger. It has to be controlled.

“A person who wants to keep their garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds” (Ibid.).

The gardeners here who take such good care of the lawn, the hedges or the shrubs, don't lead us to an area of the garden and say, ‘Here, this is where we grow all the weeds.’

A good garden has no place for weeds. There's only one thing you do with the weeds: you pull them up by the roots, so they don't grow more, or they don't spread. Also, if the weeds are there, they're soaking up the good organic matter that's there in the earth.

You get rid of them. No place for them. There can't be any areas of our life that we reserve a plot for weeds, for bad things.

I put my Christian vocation into brackets or parentheses for this particular time or period of the day or of the week. I suspend all my good habits for this particular moment.

We get rid of those weeds. God wants us to be fighters, people who struggle.

Which is stronger: the reed that is bent by the wind or the reed that stands up against the wind? We may be weak, we may be flighty, we might have our miseries, but we want to be reeds that stand up against the wind with a certain fortitude and strength.

We have to stand up against the winds that blow, the atmosphere that may be around us.

“Any dead thing can float downstream” (G.K. Chesterton). We have to swim against the current.

Now is the time when we have to try and learn how to practice this virtue. Age doesn't help. Virtue doesn't come with age.

St. Josemaría says, “Don't wait to be old to be holy” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 113). Sometimes we think that holiness comes with old age. It can be more difficult. The devil can throw more things at us. Now is the time when we have to learn how to practice the virtues.

Sometimes we need to be told things, and told things very clearly.

When Pope St. John XXIII was a nuncio—he had been a nuncio in many countries before he became Pope—he had to attend many diplomatic dinners with all sorts of people, ambassadors.

At one of these big dinners, there was a lady seated not too far away from him who was very badly dressed. After the first course at this dinner, there was a bowl of fruit in the middle of the table. He picked up an apple and he offered it to her.

She looked at him with a strange look on her face and said, “Your Excellency, I didn't ask for any fruit.”

He said, “Madam, it was only after Eve ate the apple that she realized what she was wearing.”

Sometimes we have to say clear things to people, of certain standards.

All the apostles realized that they could be weak. When Our Lord talked about how one of them would betray him, they all said, “Is it I, Lord?” (Matt. 26:22).

They were aware of their weakness, of their miseries. We too can't feel that we are strong, or we can handle the situation, or these thoughts, or these pictures, or whatever.

In The Way, we’re told, “When you resolve firmly to lead a clean life, chastity will not be a burden for you; it will be a triumphal crown” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 123).

He also says, “Without holy purity one cannot persevere in the apostolate” (Ibid., Point 129).

It is necessary for leading a Christian life, for having an influence. That cleanliness of heart is a great goal to work for.

St. Paul tells us on many occasions that it is worth the effort. At times the struggle may be more difficult. We might have to fight, and fight to the death.

Sometimes we might have to use extraordinary means. Our Lord says, “If your hand is an occasion of sin to you, cut it off” (Matt. 18:8). Get rid of it.

Sometimes we might have to change our job, change our city, change where we are living. We may need to get away from a certain person that may be causing us problems. Anything, rather than consent.

We have to try to remove all obstacles, all temptations, because we want to get to heaven—and we want to make a job of getting to heaven. That is the most important thing.

Many great things flow from having a clean heart. We get a penetrating vision for what is divine. We sense the presence of God in things.

“Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8), not just in the next world, but in this world—in people, in places.

A clean heart gives us confidence in God, in Our Father, that He will give us the graces to struggle. It helps us to have a sincere repentance because somehow, we see a little clearer the gravity of sin, the ugliness of sin.

A clean heart helps us to know ourselves a little more, and our sins, and our weaknesses, of where we need to be better. It can give us a true humility because we know we are weak. We realize that perhaps we don't know the extent of our weakness.

By that cleanliness we can have a great love for God and love for others. It gives us a great capacity to do apostolate—a desire, a zeal to reach out to others, to help them to know these beautiful things, beautiful truths that we have come to know.

It gives us a bigger heart, so that we can love others more. We are not madly in love with ourselves. Love is wanting good for others. Lust is wanting good or pleasure for me.

Cleanliness of heart can give us a great fortitude in the face of difficulties: a willingness to fight. It makes us more human, and therefore better able to understand others.

Our Lord, on His way to Calvary, when He atones for all the sins of men, stripped of His garments, exposed to the vulgar gaze of the crowd, atoning for all of our sins of impurity, is inviting us to have those deeper desires.

We are told in The Way, “All the sins of your life seem to rise up against you. Don't lose confidence. Rather, call on your holy Mother Mary, with the faith and abandonment of a child. She will bring peace to your soul” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 498).

The virtue is worth striving for.

We are told in The Way, “How is that heart of yours getting along? Don't worry: the saints—who were perfectly ordinary, normal beings like you and me—also felt those ‘natural’ inclinations. And if they had not felt them, their ‘supernatural’ reaction of keeping their heart—soul and body—for God, instead of giving it to creatures, would have had little merit.

“That's why once the way is seen, I think that the heart's weaknesses need be no obstacle for a determined soul, for a soul in love” (Ibid., Point 164).

We have many encouragements to live this virtue well.

We can turn to Our Mother, remembering that we have prayers like the Memorare, the Rosary, little aspirations—ways to stay close to her.

In moments of difficulty or temptation, like a little child, we can turn to that Mother that we need so much and ask her for all the graces we need to conquer in this particular situation.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

SMF