Pure of Heart

Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God (Matt.5:8).

 

What does it mean to be "pure of heart?"  According to Kirkegaard, purity of heart means to desire only one thing.  If we desire God and everything else too, we are not pure of heart.  We have a saying along the lines of we find what we are looking for.  I think that explains pretty well what purity of heart means.  If we are looking for God, we will find Him.  If we are looking for something else, that is what we will find -- human respect, wealth, power, control, etc.

 

Above my desk is a painting that I love --a simple work by Tarkay of trees, sky, and earth.  I love to look at it when I cannot be outside seeing the real thing.  I have attached a card to the painting that reads "The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything."  Some people do see God in everything that happens, in every event and circumstance of their lives:  They see life as with the eyes of God, [they] find Him living in the world around them; [their] way of prayer is not external, speaking as it were to another, but internal, to God whom they have found within them, occupying all that they are.  To withdraw such souls from what some might call their dreamland would be unfortunate, to put them on more "practical" lines would be to load them with chains....(Archbishop Alban Goodier, S.J.)

 

"How can we climb to such immense heights?....the very first step is to know that I as I am, am an obstacle to the Kingdom.  I must start, before anything else, by clearing myself out of the way.  I must learn, right down to my reflexes, to say and mean and know, "Let my name perish, so Thy Kingdom come" (Gerald Heard, English Spiritual Writer:  The Call of the Few).

 

Every one of us wants to say, "I am!"  "See Me!"  "Acknowledge Me!"  "Respect Me!"  Until we reach the point of saying with Catherine of Siena: God is He Who Is; Catherine is she who is not," until we truly know that we are "in the way of the kingdom," we will not be pure of heart.  Finally, we must come to say to Him:  "You ARE!"  and to others:  "See God; Acknowledge God; Respect God; Do whatever He tells you."  Then we will be pure of heart.

 

Oswald Chambers says that the Beatitudes "contain the dynamite of the Holy Spirit.  They explode when the circumstances of our lives cause them to do so, and we have to decide whether we will accept the tremendous spiritual upheaval that will be produced if we obey His words."  To begin with any one of the Beatitudes is to set out on a lifetime journey.  To begin with purity of heart is to taste our destination before we arrive.