Blessed Are The Pure of Heart

I am racing the lightening storm and hoping to get this posted before the inevitable . . . line transients which always reset my computer during electrical storms here in the Maryland suburbs of DC. Today is the feast day of St. Maria Goretti; virgin and martyr. Maria along with Blessed Pier Giorgio really ought to be every parent’s patron saints these days. Both saints were models of purity and chastity in their own ways. Maria’s witness was quite visibly heroic; Pier Giorgio’s was perhaps more ordinary compared to Maria, but nonetheless, heroic. If you are not familiar with them, consider checking them out. John Paul the Great devotes 27 of his Wednesday Audience catecheses in his Theology of the Body series to the virtue of which these two heroes witnessed—purity of heart. Here is my take on the essence of these audiences. Purity of heart, especially sexual purity is a challenge in our fallen state. Did you say fallen state? It seems that concupiscence is an overlooked truth these days. In fact, not only is our fallenness ignored, it seems when it comes to virtues the only one acknowledged is a rather novel creation — authenticity. One must be authentic; which seems to mean that one should follow whatever he is inclined toward by his emotions and appetites. JPTG (JP the Great of course) would say that this is a lie. Purity of heart, the ability to see a “babe” or a “hunk” as a person whom God has created for her or his own sake; not as an object for pleasure or emotional security. Purity of heart is critical in marriage as well. JPTG says that it is still possible to lust after one’s spouse. Using one’s wife or husband as an object of pleasure is a constant danger which must be guarded against. Purity of heart is ultimately a single-minded surrender of oneself to God such that we see others as God sees them . . . as those for whom He gave His only Son. We must learn to see others as gifts; gifts from God to themselves and gifts of themselves to us. This is the “narrow way” to holiness and ultimate happiness in this life and the next.