"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God" This is probably the most musical or poetic sounding Beatitude. Almost sounds like a line out of the prayer of St Francis. And yet we do not want to lose the challenge by getting caught up in the poetry.
I am so grateful that throughout the Beatitudes the "reward" is not from having achieved, but from the striving. To achieve this Beatitude is humanly impossible. Pure in heart means singleness of mind, no ambivalence, never an ulterior motive, an open, clear, childlike sincerity. There are always secondary motives, another agenda, a political strategy, figuring how to put a good "spin" on it. "Jesus, what do you mean, 'pure in heart," did you not... do you not live in the real world?"
It is a goal. It is the goal of living a life of integrity, a life that has a singleness of purpose (Jesus said it: "love the Lord your God with heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself."), and in which we try to weed out the negative, the nasty, the revenge. Sometime ago a person in one of my divorce groups shared with us that she was having a great deal of difficulty with her husband from whom she was divorcing. He was nasty, used their four year old son to hurt her, and so forth. She said, "a friend advised me to always take the high road, you will never meet him there."
I grew up on a dairy farm and every spring we would plant the crops..wheat, corn, oats. The corn was planted in rows and it was important, at least to my pride, that the rows be straight. My grandfather advised me to line up the front of the tractor with a tree at the other end of the field. "Do not take your eyes off the tree, never look back," he advised. Of course about half way, I needed to see how I was doing and I looked back. All summer as the corn grew there was that kink in the row where I looked back.
The pure in heart keep their eye on the goal. They are not expected to do it perfectly, but their singular commitment opens them to the presence of God. |