Purity of the 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.

We're told in the Book of Isaiah, “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may spring up” (Isa. 45:8).

Christmas is a light in the darkness, a light that will never go out. Christmas calls us to a new purity of heart.

Everyone who looks towards Bethlehem can contemplate the Baby Jesus with Mary and Joseph. But it's only those who look with a pure heart who will see God, because God shows Himself only to those who are clean of heart (cf. Matt. 5:8).

Christmas is a summons to that purity of heart. Perhaps many people see nothing wonderful when this feast comes around because they're blind to what is truly important. Their hearts may be full of material things, or possibly of filth and misery.

Uncleanness of heart produces insensitivity to the things of God, and to much that is humanly good as well, including compassion for the unhappiness of other people.

But from a pure heart springs joy, the ability to see the divine, to trust in God, to have sincere repentance, to have recognition of ourselves and of our sins, to have true humility, and to have a great love for God and for other people.

Some scribes and Pharisees once asked Our Lord, “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.”

Our Lord took the opportunity to show them that they were disregarding more important precepts.

“Hypocrites!” He said to them. “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me’” (Matt. 15:2,7-8; Isa. 29:13).

Then Our Lord called the people together because He was going to say something important. It was not to be a question of yet another interpretation of a point in the Law, but something fundamental.

He was about to explain to them what really makes someone pure or impure in God's eyes.

We’re told in St. Matthew, “And he called the people to him and said to them, ‘Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a man’” (Matt. 15:10).

And a little later, He explained to His disciples on their own: “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man” (Matt. 15:18-20).

Christmas beckons us to focus a little more on the interior things, on the things of the heart, the things that pass through our mind or our imagination, and to ask for that interior purity and cleanliness that Our Lord is speaking of, so that we can approach the Christ Child and the stable in Bethlehem with the dispositions that Our Lord would like us to have.

“What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart” (Matt. 15:18). The whole man is defiled by what happens in his heart—evil desires and intentions, envy, spite.

These external sins which Our Lord enumerates, before they're ever committed externally, have already been committed interiorly in the sinner's heart.

That's where God is loved or offended. And that's why we have to examine our heart, and take care of our heart, and guard our heart, and purify our heart, and seek refuge in the Heart of Christ. Fashion our heart after that Heart of Christ.

It’s true that sometimes the external action increases the goodness or the sinfulness of the interior act, through a greater intensity of determination, of the harm caused to other people.

But ultimately, it's the heart that must be kept healthy and clean, and then all the rest will be pure and pleasing to God.

One of the greatest things we can do for our family, for our marriage, for our spiritual life, for our apostolate, is to take care of that cleanliness of heart.

Our Lord describes as blessed and happy those who do that, those who guard their hearts, and that's something we have to work at every day.

The Book of Proverbs says, “Keep custody of your heart with all vigilance; for from it flows the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23).

The one thing that the devil would like us to do is to let down the guard of our heart, not to give the things of our heart importance, to dilly-dally or dialogue with temptation, just like Eve did in the Garden of Paradise.

We're invited to keep far away from proximate occasions of sin, and those things that may cause us problems that might not be problems for other people, but we know are problems for us. We're not here to play with fire.

If we guard that heart, from that guardianship flows joy and peace, the ability to love, and to do apostolate.

Cleanliness of the heart is a prerequisite for an effective apostolate, because otherwise, people who don't guard their hearts can attach themselves in the wrong way to people and to things.

They can get very excited about worldly things, material things, sporting things. But among all the aims of our lives, there's only one which is truly necessary.

That's why the Mystery of the Incarnation, as it comes around again every year, is a great opportunity for us to focus on what is really important, and to remind ourselves that the thing that is truly necessary is to reach the goal which God has set for us: to attain to heaven by living our own individual Christian vocation to the full, in the place where God has placed us.

In order to achieve that, we have to be ready to lose everything else, to clear away anything that would obstruct our way.

In some ways, that's the deeper hidden message of the journey of the Holy Family to Bethlehem. They left everything behind to completely focus on what was really important.

Everything must be a means for reaching God.

If anything turns out to be an obstacle, then we have to put it right. We have to give it up in sacrifice; be ready to do whatever is necessary to get rid of that particular thing.

The virtue of purity of heart is like having wings, wings that help us to fly very high. God does not want those wings to be caked with mud.

We have to keep ourselves in good shape, be aware of the things that can cause problems, take care of those wings.

I saw a photograph of a KLM jumbo jet one time being transported along the canals of Amsterdam. It was an unusual photograph to see this huge jumbo in the middle of a housing estate. It was able to be like that because they had cut off the wings. It was being decommissioned. It had finished its hours of flying, and it was being transported to become a restaurant.

But there was something a little bit sad about the picture, because you had this huge jumbo jet that had flown thousands of people all over the world, thousands of miles, and now it wasn't going to fly anymore. That's a machine that's been created to fly.

But we also have been created to fly in our spiritual life. Our wings are provided by the virtue of purity.

Our Lord's words are very clear: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away. … And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than that your whole body would go into hell” (Matt. 5:29-30).

Christ is very radical. Cut it off, throw it away. He doesn't say to take one long, last, lingering, loving look at your hand and then kiss it goodbye and make sure your hand feels very good about it.

Our Lord challenges us to cut, because those things can only bring us down. By our “right eye” and “right hand,” Our Lord really means anything that at a given moment may seem indispensably precious and valuable, whereas in reality, “only one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42).

“Where your heart is, there your treasure is also,” we're told in Scripture (cf. Matt. 6:21).

Our holiness, our salvation, that of ourself and of our neighbor, has to come first.

In The Way we're told, “If your right hand scandalizes you, pluck it out and cast it from you! Poor heart! For this it is that scandalizes you! Press it, squeeze it tight in your hands: give it no consolations. And when it asks for them, say to it slowly, with a noble compassion—in confidence, as it were: ‘Heart, heart on the Cross, heart on the Cross!’” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 163).

The things that we need to leave behind, to abandon, or to cut out of our lives, can be of many very different sorts.

Sometimes they might even be things that are good in themselves, but which our own egoism, or our own failure to rectify our intention, has turned into obstacles to our holiness.

Very often they may not be anything of any great importance, but mere whims, or habitual minor self-indulgences, or failures in complete self-control, or excessive preoccupations with material things.

St. Augustine says, “Observe how the sea comes in through any leaky places in the hull, and little by little fills the hold of the boat. Unless it is expelled, the ship goes down. … Imitate the sailors: their hands never rest until they have bailed her out thoroughly; let yours never rest from doing good.

“In spite of everything, however, the bottom of the ship will fill with water again, because the weak points of our human nature are always there; and you will have to man the pumps again” (St. Augustine, Sermon 16).

This is one of the reasons given for frequent Confession. The Church has always recommended frequent Confession every week or every two weeks, in order to bail out all the little things, all the garbage that may have seeped in, all the muck that can be there, so as we work in a constant way of keeping the ship afloat.

These obstacles and tendencies—we're not able to get rid of them with just one determined effort, but rather, they demand of us a continual, confident, and cheerful struggle. And that can give us great help towards becoming more humble.

If we have something to say in the sacrament of Confession that costs us an effort, that's embarrassing or shameful—and everybody from time to time has those things—we can ask Our Lady to help us to make a good Confession and offer up that effort or that sacrifice it may take us to get that garbage out.

We know from experience that that can give us great peace and joy, “a peace and joy that this world cannot give” (cf. John 14:27), the sort of peace and joy that we find in this stable in Bethlehem, united with the Holy Family.

Love of frequent Confession and persistence with our daily, regular examination of conscience help us to keep our souls clean and ready to contemplate Our Lord in the stable in Bethlehem, in spite of our obvious daily weaknesses.

This isn't just important for adults; it's also very important for children. Sometimes the sins of children from the perspective of adults can seem to be very trivial, but they're not so trivial for the child, who may have a very sensitive conscience.

It's a great act of charity to expose young children to frequently receive the sacrament of Confession. And if you're a parent, it's very good that they see you going to Confession.

If you're on holiday from school and there are regular Confessions in the school, use the holiday period to make sure they keep up that frequent Confession.

Or if they're in a boarding school and they don't have that facility, make sure they are able to benefit from the sacrament during the holiday period. That could be one of the great spiritual goals of these days and these weeks.

We're told that the pure of heart shall see God. “Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). And we’ll see Him even in this life, and fully in the life to come.

But how wonderful that is, that young people and old people and not-so-young people can see God in the things that happen in this life, in the things that happen to them, the ups and downs of life, the successes, the failures, the catastrophes, the tragedies, the things that work out and things that don't. It's a wonderful thing to be able to see God.

St. Leo the Great says, “‘The pure in heart shall see God.’ It is with good reason that the beatitude of seeing God is promised to the pure in heart. A life that is defiled can never contemplate the splendor of true Light, because the very same thing which is the joy of pure souls will be the punishment of those that are defiled” (St. Leo the Great, Sermon 95, On the Beatitudes).

If our hearts are pure, they will know how to recognize Christ in the intimacy of silent prayer.

These days around Christmas are very much days for silent prayer, accompanying the Holy Family, invoking St. Joseph, following the shepherds.

We recognize Christ there, or also in the middle of a busy day of work, or in the ordinary events of everyday life. Our Lord lives and goes on acting within us.

A Christian who sincerely searches for Our Lord will find Him, like the shepherds found Him and the Magi found Him, because it's the same Lord who is looking for us.

If we lack inner purity, the clearest signs will mean nothing to us. Or we shall interpret them all wrong, as the Pharisees did, even to the point of being scandalized by them.

God Himself and His works in the world can only be seen by those whose dispositions are good.

If we want to contemplate God while we live on this earth, then we're under the blessed obligation of developing our interior life, of keeping watch over our senses, and of persevering in the little mortifications which we can offer to God every day.

Cherish the opportunities that come in your family life these days to form your children in piety.

In our house when we were kids, Santa Claus would come to us together with our cousins at about six o'clock in the evening. He would bang on the window. It was dark outside.

He would come in with a big sack, we'd all get our presents, and then we would go to the crib and say three Hail Marys. Whether we were five or nine or ten or twelve, that event was terminated with this small act of piety. It took five minutes.

Try and have simple little things like that in your family life, so that people are led to the crib to thank God for all the good things.

That state of interior recollection is perfectly compatible with hard work, and with the normal social relationships proper to someone who has to live in the middle of the world.

We're 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.

“In fact, if they had not felt them, their ‘supernatural’ reaction of keeping their heart—their soul and body—for God, instead of giving it to creatures, would have had little merit. Once the way is seen, therefore, I think the heart’s weaknesses need be no obstacle for a determined soul, for a soul in love” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 164).

The words of the saints are enormously encouraging, no matter what our weaknesses or miseries may be.

This contemplative life is within reach of every Christian. But there has to be a firm, serious decision to look for God in every circumstance, to purify ourselves, and also to make reparation for our sins and for our errors.

It's always a grace from God that He does not deny to anyone who humbly asks for it. Advent is a particularly appropriate time to ask for this gift.

Then, if we have been faithful, we will attain to a knowledge of God as perfect, immediate, clear, and thorough as is possible for man's created and limited nature. We shall see Him when the time has come, and perhaps for us that might be quite soon. We shall know God as He knows us, directly and face to face.

St. John says, “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Man will then be able to gaze upon God without being blinded and without dying.

We will, at last, be able to gaze upon God and to contemplate Him, that same God that we have tried to serve throughout our lives.

A secular writer has said, “You can't play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal. You can't play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth. You can't play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds” (Dag Hammarskjold).

As we examine our hearts, we have to see: Is there any area of my heart where I have reserved a plot for weeds?

I heard a speaker once say that the three great influencers of the 20th century, in terms of thinking, have been Malthus, Marx, and Freud: Malthus with his population policies, Marx with communism, and Freud with the sexual revolution.

To a certain extent, Marx is passé, but the other two are still very much with us: all sorts of wrong ideas circulating—poisonous ideas—that can ruin people, souls, families, societies.

No person of any age is immune from these problems, these infections. We have to be careful. That guard of the heart is an important thing, and great things may be dependent on that.

Cardinal Sarah in his book The Power of Silence says, “The silence of the eyes consists of being able to close one's eyes in order to contemplate God who is in us, in the interior depths of our personal abyss. … The tyranny of the image forces man to renounce the silence of the eyes.

“Humanity itself has returned to the sad prophecy of Isaiah, which was repeated by Jesus: ‘Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. … For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn from me to heal them’ (Matt. 13:15, Isa. 6:9-10).

“Silence of the heart consists of quieting little by little our miserable human sentiments so as to become capable of having the same sentiments as those of Jesus. Silence of the heart is the silence of the passions. It's necessary to die to self in order to join the Son of God in silence.”

Very close to the Blessed Trinity, we contemplate Our Lady as she goes towards Bethlehem in the company of St. Joseph, Daughter of God the Father, Mother of God the Son, Spouse of God the Holy Spirit.

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.

UI