Blessed are the clean of heart.
Matthew 5:8
To live the life of God with Him means a life that is above everything created on this earth and belongs wholly to God, glorifying the will of God, the perfect love of God. That is the pinnacle to which we are called. And how to get there? We must incessantly occupy our thoughts with that question.
For thousands of years it has been customary to distinguish three different approaches to a devout life: the way of purification, the way of illumination, and the way of unity; or, in other words, the way of beginners, the way of the more advanced, and the way of the perfect. The heights of perfection are therefore two steps removed; these must be climbed before we can reach the fulfillment of love. They cannot be separated from one another or sidetracked in any way. It is not as though we could reach unity without the labor of purifying the heart, shielding it against sin and error; or as though we could dispense with illumination, the constant desire for virtue and growth in virtue. These three paths of purification, illumination, and unity are so closely linked that they converge.
Let us consider purification. “Blessed are the clean of heart… .”
1. THE REASON FOR PURIFICATION
To live God’s life with Him in Christ Jesus… . He, the true vine, desires and is obliged to extend His life to us. That is the deepest meaning of our Christian life, of Christianity. We are, as St. Paul recalls (more than a hundred and fifty times!) in his epistles, “in Christ Jesus.” We are vitally joined to Him, just as the branch is joined to the vine, the hand to the arm, the arm to the body, the body to the living soul. In us Jesus wishes to reflect Himself. In us He desires to relive, as faithfully and perfectly as possible, the life He led on earth, to the glory of the Father, to the healing of our souls and the souls of others.
He, however, leads a life of the utmost purity, since He is the Son of God, God Himself. He cannot live otherwise than in a pure and holy manner. All His thoughts and wishes, His intentions and motives, are pure. His heart is pure, free from any imperfect impulse, attraction, or repulsion; free from the slightest attachment to personal judgment, personal insight, or personal will; free from all sensuality, from every sign of pride, from every form of selfishness. As divine purity, He lives in us, His limbs, and ardently desires that His purity may overcome in us all that is unclean, filling us completely. For this He gives us His example. For this He also gives us His strength. In the strength of Christ we can and must “cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1).
There is such as a thing as original sin. The great corruption of the human heart from which we suffer dates back to this. Our intellect is darkened. We recognize neither God nor ourselves. Left to our own mentality we understand neither the reason for our existence nor the direction it is taking. We do not know what our true happiness consists of, neither do we know how we shall find it. We are blind and do not know we are blind; yes, we believe that we can see, although we do not see. Our will, created quite straight by our Maker, is twisted and perverse. Our heart originally had a natural urge to love God above all things. Original sin has diverted our love to ourselves. Whatever we love, we love for our own sake. We seek our own advantage, our own interest in everything. From childhood on we strive for earthly possessions and enjoyments. Hence the needs and the sensations of the body draw us so completely into their toils that they make slaves of us. Covetousness, the source of nearly all our sins, springs from original sin. It inclines us to evil. It makes it so difficult for us to desire good, still more difficult to do good. We see what is good – acknowledge, approve, and desire it – but we do evil. We are not what we ought to be. There is so much in us that should not be. What must we do about it? We must tear ourselves daily from all disordered instinct and inclinations, from pride and sensuality, from destructive adherence to our own judgment, our own wishes, our own will, our own selfish greed.
The question of our inner progress, of our climbing the heights of a Christian life, a life with God and for God, is simply a question of purifying the heart. We get just so much grace as our heart is ready for by the cleansing it has received. The measure of benefit we can derive from Holy Communion, from prayer, from our religious life, depends entirely on our heart’s state of purity – its freedom from sin, from pride, from selfishness and the love of self, from all errors of thought and desire, from the personal ego with its illusions and false values. The first step toward grace, toward progress in grace, is the purification of the heart. When our spiritual strivings come to a halt, when prayer and the sacraments no longer bear fruit, then a cleansing of the heart is indicated. This is the essential pre-requisite before any progress can be made.
Hence, the work of cleansing the heart is the most fundamental task. The road of purification is the first road to take. Whoever thinks he can arrive at his destination by taking some other, more comfortable, way is making a grievous mistake. Those who wish to climb the ladder must start with the lowest rung. Without a beginning there can be no progress, no completion. First, all faults must be eliminated, all weeds rooted out, the soil prepared. The first step is the most necessary – indeed, the only one that can ensure success. Of course, the labor may be frightening enough to put one off. Possibly the modern idea – “All nature is good. Let it have its way. Let the weeds grow” – sounds quite sensible. But here the words of the prophet apply: “My people, they that call thee blessed, the same deceive thee, and destroy the way of thy steps” (Is 3:12).
In reality, only one way leads to success: the way that lies in purifying the heart. It is not sufficient in itself to achieve perfection, but it cannot be omitted. When the Virgin of Nazareth was chosen to bear the Son of God, to become the Mother of Christ, the first requirement was her purity. That is the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. When a St. Benedict, a St. Francis, a St. Gertrude, a St. Thérèse desire to mount the heights of holiness from the child Jesus, they have to wrestle constantly for complete purity of love in thoughts, intentions, and motives, following the commandment: “He that is holy, let him be sanctified still” (Rev 22:11).
“Blessed are the clean of heart.” With the Psalmist we pray: “Create a clean heart in me, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Ps 50:10).
2. THE WAY OF PURIFICATION
Create a clean heart in me… . It is God’s purpose and our duty to cleanse ourselves from all evil that we have done or that resides in us; to preserve our purity from all evil, from sin and untruth.
Naturally, this cleansing relates in the first place to every sin of sensuality, every conscious transgression, every untruth, every waste of time and grace in deliberate neglect, lack of concentration, inefficiency, in all branches of our daily life. It is therefore true that we fail and commit sin daily. Incessantly we are obliged to admit faults and ask God’s pardon. Constantly we have reason to pray: “Our Father, forgive us our trespasses.”
It is up to us to enter daily into the spirit of the Confiteor, the preparatory prayer of Mass: “I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” It is only right that we should frequently receive the sacrament of Penance. We should submit cheerfully to our daily labors and exertions, doing our duty in a spirit of contrition and atonement, taking up the burdens and bitterness we may be called upon to bear, as though they were a cross. The spirit of penitence should permeate all our acts, spurring us on to greater fidelity, so that we may serve Him Whom we have offended with the glowing ardor of pure love.
In the second place, purification is concerned with liberating us from the bad habit of seeking first our own convenience and advantage, our own personal interests, the satisfaction of our own wishes. First ourselves, then God! Here is the gaping wound, the core of our sickness, the canker that infects the blood. We seek self first; we are selfish egoists masked in piety and deluding ourselves that we cannot know our inner motives – perhaps, if the truth were known, because we do not even want to see them. In almost every case, this secret attitude renders devotion futile, being neither genuine nor sincere. We live in a kind of easygoing piety, even in our innermost heart, and find it quite easy to “pray”: “Hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be done.” We dedicate ourselves daily to Almighty God so that we may live entirely for Him, endure everything for His sake, devoting our life wholly to His honor and His interests. Gloria Patri, et Filio et Spiritui Sancto. But in everyday matters we belie our resolutions and our prayers. “Create in me, O Lord, a clean heart.”
Another destructive habit is that of immersing ourselves in all kinds of useless, perverted, vain thoughts, making plans for the future, worrying unnecessarily. There are some things we must really dwell on and be concerned about. God wills it so, but in moderation. And we so seldom do this in moderation! Man is so constituted that he worries about things that really do not concern him – things that come within his orbit, perhaps, but in relation to which he is powerless. He, however, does not like to feel frustrated and impotent. He looks upon himself as one of importance and takes pains to regulate the future, always trying to anticipate and avoid some unpleasant eventuality. He is unwilling to place his hand trustfully in his Maker’s, leaving the future to providence.
He also likes to worry about the past. It is a part and parcel of ‘devout’ life, this mulling over of past defections. We must dot our i’s and cross our t’s. We can’t trust God to forgive our sins; we can’t believe that in His goodness He has already forgiven us. No, we must do it all ourselves. We can rely only on our own efforts, not on the sacrament, not on the power of “I release you from your sin.” We dare not accept the truth that He, in His loving care, has given us the light of grace to make a true act of contrition necessary for the worthy reception of the sacrament. It is the pride of man, with his fancies! It can, of course, be a mental sickness, this tendency to worry. But more often it is simply born of pride or destructive self-reliance. Thus, we must earnestly strive to free our minds from useless thoughts and worries.
Finally, there is the cleansing directed at setting us free from moods and ups-and-downs of temperament. Every temperament has its own lights and shades. A sanguine person is very easily moved by pleasant impressions, but these impressions are superficial. He is charming in social intercourse, friendly, not exactly reliable. He is easily exhausted and not one who concentrates or who can be expected to rise to an emergency. The choleric man is equally easily moved, but in his case impressions go deep and are enduring. He is more accessible to serious ideas than to superficial impressions. He is a man of energy, endurance, initiative, and strong will; but he has a tendency to pride, to tyranny, to aggressiveness. The melancholy man is slow and easily hurt. He is open to depressive ideas; slow, patient, enduring, more contemplative than active. Then there is the man of phlegmatic character. Not easily moved, he is one on whom nothing makes a very deep or lasting impression. Practically nothing ever upsets his equilibrium. It is easy for him to forgive and forget. But he prefers a middle course and is seldom moved to any heroic decision or any great work.
It is obviously no easy matter for a man to remake his whole nature, strengthening his good parts so that they may bear fruit and uprooting his undesirable tendencies. Not even all the saints honored on our altars were successful in overcoming all the faults of their characters. But they did strive tirelessly to rid themselves of temperamental flaws. Do not even worldlings strive to master their weaknesses? What a guard they have to keep on their temperament in order to maintain their ascendancy over their fellow men, to gain esteem, to emerge triumphant in the battle for existence! “For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light” (Lk 16:8). Can we afford to lag behind the children of the world if we desire to share God’s life with Him?
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THE FIRST decisive step in a life of a Christian sanctity is the cleansing of the heart. Cleansing from sin and conscious untruth, from undesirable habits, from self-seeking, from thinking only in terms of natural man, from useless preoccupation with worry, faults of character and temperament … . Guarding it against every sin and every conscious perversion… . The labor of a lifetime!
Can we possibly accomplish this task? – Certainly not of ourselves alone. We must turn to God. “Create in me, O Lord, a clean heart.” Relying upon strength and grace, with our eyes fixed upon the loving Lord who desires to live His pure, holy life in us, we can go confidently to work. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13).
We must examine ourselves carefully to discover if, in the past, we have tackled the task of cleansing the heart seriously enough.
Our decision stands firm: To live God’s life with Him in Christ Jesus, to the pattern set by Jesus and strengthened by His power working in us. “He that abides in me, and I in Him [as the vine and the branches], the same bears much fruit. For without me you can do nothing.”
By Benedict Bauer, In Silence with God, Scepter Publishers, 1997, pp. 45-52
Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash
