Purity of Heart

4. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.                     

8. Blessed are the pure/clean in heart, for they will see God.

Matthew 5: 4, 8

Trying to define what is meant by “the pure in heart” is a huge subject —  one on which books have been written. I confess that I have felt somewhat paralyzed by this subject. And while my goal here is not so much to define purity of heart as it is to talk about contemplation, still, I feel that I should, at least, provide some basic ideas about what I mean when I say purity of heart — or rather, what I think Jesus means. 

So here I want to begin by offering three basic ways of thinking about purity of heart which I find helpful. Then afterwards I will describe how, through prayerful contemplation, we can open ourselves to and move towards each of these understandings of purity through mourning.

1. Purity of heart Towards God: Christianity is a unique religion because, whereas other religions lay out a list of dos and don’ts, or practices, or mindfulnesses to practice and offer to their God in order to be accepted or rewarded — Christianity, which often has many of the same laws or requirements, recognizes that human beings, who have a fallen, sinful nature, cannot keep these requirements because their hearts are set against God.

   
   
   
   

   As a result Christianity works opposite of other faiths. In Christianity, a person must come to see, and mourn over, their sin, rebellion and spiritual helplessness in order to “see God,” rather than trying to work their way into God’s favor. The cross is the central symbol of Christianity because the cross is the picture of  sinful human hostility towards God and God’s sacrificial death to forgive human sin and restore the relationship between human beings and God.

   
   
   
   

   The primary purity of heart that Jesus surely had in mind in Matthew 5:8 was the purity he would offer to those who would believe in him — a purity of grace through which a person, whose sins and rebellion were forgiven, would turn from hostility towards God to love for God. Obviously there could be no other movement towards purity of heart (as far as Christianity is concerned) until the impurity of rebellion and hatred towards God was overcome.

   
   

2. Purity of Heart Towards Others: Purity of heart, in the Gospels, is a way of understanding and practice, often shown by the contrast of the purity of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law with that of Jesus.

   
   
   
   

   The Pharisees and teachers of the Law had an outward practices approach to purity of heart. They believed that purity of heart was a matter of careful interpretation of the law and careful observance and obedience to the Law, resulting in public displays of devotion. Through these outward practices the religious leaders distinguished and separated themselves, setting themselves apart from other less observant and devoted Jews, as well as from despised Gentiles. As a result, the religious leaders could declare themselves to have reached a settled state of purity through their separation and observance. Their call to followers and converts was that they should also become separated and observant in order to enter into this settled state of purity. When Jesus did not follow their strategy for purity, they viewed him as an enemy.

   
   
   
   

   Jesus, on the other hand, understood purity of heart as an inner desire and journey, not of separation, but of loving connection with God his Father and with people whom he saw as his neighbors and God’s children. For this reason, Jesus was not particularly concerned with separating himself from the unclean, or with careful observances of the ceremonial Law. He was more interested in connecting people around him to God’s love, by faith and calling them to repentance from sin.

   
   
   
   

   Jesus’ desire for holiness and purity was certainly not less than that of the religious teachers — it was more. As a result, Jesus called his followers to his same kind of  love for God, his same desire for holiness and inner purity of heart — expressed through a humble love for others rather than through the disdainful separation practiced by the Jewish religious leaders. For Jesus, purity of heart was about a process of turning from selfish ways of living and loving towards love for God and others.

   
   
   
   

   James, one of the leaders of the early church in Jerusalem, confronted the church on this very issue,

   
   

   James did not blame the conflict and fighting of the early church on any situation or pressure or disagreement in particular, but on the impurity of their hearts.

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” — James 4: 1-3

James tells the church that the way to purify their hearts is to…

Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. — James 4:9-10

3. Purity of Heart Within Oneself: Finally, purity of heart is a growing inner struggle and confrontation in which a life that is driven by sinful passions of the heart, is increasingly putting to death or crucifying those passions (see Galatians 5:24).

   
   

   In our modern culture to be passionate about work or life is a good thing, but in ancient culture, the sinful passions were understood to be corrupting desires of the heart that could control a person’s life and ruin their character. Evagrius Ponticus, a desert monk from the mid-late third century, identified and listed eight passions: pride, anger, lust, greed, laziness, gluttony and sadness (discontentment) and vanity — which later were shortened and became known as the seven deadly sins.

   
   
   
   

   The Apostle Paul described the passions as the desires of the flesh and provided his own list in Galatians 5:19-21: “sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; haters, discord, jealousy,  fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” Paul spoke of “crucifying the flesh with its passions,” by which he seems to have meant that we should identify and expose them in ourselves, and then put them to death through a slow and painful process.

My understanding of the Beatitudes, is that in Matthew 5:3-10, Jesus gave his followers a way to address the heart through parallel statements — a beatitude to contemplate (Blessed are they that mourn) and a parallel beatitude as the goal (Blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God).

In this particular pair of beatitudes, I believe that Jesus intended his disciples to mourn as a way of moving towards purity of heart (an understanding that I base on Ezekiel 9). How can contemplative mourning lead to purity of heart? 

 Contemplation is a kind of beholding prayer. In the beatitudes we are gazing at the words of Jesus because they are the words of life. What does it mean to gaze at Jesus’ blessing on the pure in heart? It means that, in stillness, with our intention directed towards Christ, we open ourselves with as much honesty as possible, to consider and listen to what God’s Spirit is saying to us and to mourn…

To mourn over the nature of our hostility, apathy, unbelief, lack of love for and submission to God — and to receive God’s grace and mercy in Christ rather than condemnation — so that our hostility towards God might be purified towards love.

To mourn over our lack of love for people and the ways we separate ourselves from others to be superior — and to contemplate the nature of God’s love for His enemies and the way Jesus desires to express his love towards our enemies, those who have offended us, and the stranger.

To mourn over the dark, chaotic sinful passions that swim around in our hearts and minds, like so many poisonous snakes, ready to devour us through bitterness and lust and arrogance and discontentment, and to harm others — and to contemplate the freedom that Jesus bought for us on the cross and which he dearly wants to develop within us.

Contemplative mourning is the opening of our hearts to God, to see and acknowledge our sin in the presence of Christ, in whom we are abundantly forgiven, loved and favored.