Pure in heart – 15 March 2013

Pure in heart…  Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God.  “Pure in heart…”  I increasingly dislike and distrust definitions, most of all in the teachings of spirituality.  Definitions may give us an illusion of understanding, when really all we have is a neat set of words.  However, years ago, back in the days when I thought it all ought to be really pretty simple if only I could find the right book, I came across a description of purity of heart by the Danish Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard:  Purity of heart, he said, is to will one thing.  Purity of heart is not about moral virtue.

Jesus had purity of heart.   He saw one reality, which was not his own needs, or safety, or reputation, or power – he willed his Father’s will, a love and a freedom deeper and more wonderful than these things.  Contemplative teaching says that in disciplines of stillness and silence we find we are increasingly able to lay aside the fluttering, wavering dividedness of much of our lives, our various controlling agendas, and begin to share in Jesus’s purity of heart.  And so it is that contemplative people come to be acquainted with important concepts for the journey such as attention, mindfulness, being present to others, to oneself and to God. 

All this is at the level of our hearts.   It is not some set of instructions or beliefs we have to work through.  Our prayer is already drawing each scattered or divided heart into more and more of a unity.  When you think about it, this is an amazing grace to receive, especially in our more mature years, when we might have thought we were now more fixed and settled in our attitudes.

 We start to become acquainted with what one English mystical writer called Unknowing.  Unknowing is a fascinating reality of mature years, for those who are not afraid of it.  That writer, whose name we don’t know, describes it as a cloud.  It is in no sense a menacing cloud – and through it, he or she says, we send little darts of longing love of God and our love of all that God has made and loves. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, says Jesus, they will see God.  St Paul writes about the eyes of your heart being open, that you may know… [Eph 1:18]  Perhaps this is a central truth of all Christian prayer and spirituality – it is with the eyes of the heart that the pure in heart come to see and understand.