Thought of the Day September 24, 2019 Pure heart is one that loves
This Beatitude--Blessed are the pure of heart-- helps
us to look at what are the blind spots in our heart. How is man’s inner eye
purified? How do we remove the (spiritual) cataract that blurs our vision or even blinds
it altogether? To answer this we need to look again at the
Bible’s concept of purity of heart. Ps 24:3-4: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who
shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who
does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully.” In
other words, there must be honesty, truthfulness and justice towards others. It
further says in v. 6 that a fundamental condition is to seek the face of God.
Psalm 15 elaborates further on this
condition, basically saying that the person who loves God with his whole heart,
etc and his neighbor will be able to see God.
Pope
Benedict said: “Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to
others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of
love which they crave. ... If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life,
then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable
of seeing in him the image of God. … The saints — consider the example of
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta — constantly renewed their capacity for love of
neighbor from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter
acquired its realism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love
of neighbor are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live
from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then,
of a ‘commandment’ imposed from without … but rather of a freely bestowed
experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be
shared with others. Love grows through love.”
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