Dear Friends,
I write this during one of the snow days of the “Snowmageddon,” and therefore, I write this well before it will be published. Going to bed and then waking up the next morning, I observed the phenomenon that we sometimes use to describe other situations: the pure, wind-driven snow. It was a beautiful sight, without any creatures leaving their foot or paw tracks in the snow.
Speaking of the pure, wind-driven snow, we move to the next Beatitude: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” When hearing about purity and being pure of heart, our thinking probably turns to sexual purity. Certainly, that is part of this beatitude, but there is more. A few Sundays ago, we heard the passage from Isaiah, in which he finds himself in the presence of God, surrounded by the Seraphim, and Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” In other words, he was stating he was a sinful man, living among sinful people. One of the Seraphim held an ember to Isaiah’s mouth and told him, “See, now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”
We may question why Isaiah’s wickedness wasn’t removed by cleansing water, which certainly would be less painful than an ember to the lips. Some stains and impurities are impervious to the cleansing ability of water; something else must be used, and that something else is fire or heat. When purifying gold, water is useless, but fire works well. Gold is placed in a crucible and heated. When it is first heated, one can see all sorts of impurities, which are darker spots throughout. One knows the gold is purified when one can look into the crucible and see his reflection in the molten metal.
God allows us to enter the crucible: the trials, tribulations, vicissitudes, suffering, and obstacles we all face. God allows us to face suffering and difficulties in order to remove our impurities: our sinfulness, for sure, but also the things that distract us from God and from living out the other beatitudes of mercy, justice, meekness, peacemaking, poverty, and detachment. I remember Bishop Robert Barron discussing this beatitude in his multi-part video series Catholicism, saying that those who are pure of heart are focused on the one thing necessary. The pure of heart have hearts that are not drawn in a hundred different directions but instead remain steadfast on the most important thing. Our sinfulness and distractions pull us in a hundred different directions, usually away from God, and therefore, we have the need for purification.
When God looks in the crucible, He wants to see His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We face trials and challenges, which very much can feel like being in a furnace or crucible, so that we look more and more like God’s own Son, Jesus Christ. Being the fulfillment and perfection of the Beatitudes, Jesus is pure of heart for His Sacred Heart was focused on one thing: doing the will of His Father. Our hearts are meant to seek the will of the Father, with everything else, even important things, in service of the will of the Father. By having our hearts focused on the will of God, God will see His Son in us, and others may be able to see Christ in us. Even more so, by having our hearts focused on the will of God, we will begin to see God at work in all things—not just the obvious or spectacular, not just the good and wonderful, but in the mundane, ordinary, and even difficult parts of life.
It should be noted that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a burning heart, a heart on fire with love for us; the Sacred Heart is perhaps even a crucible. Within the Sacred Heart, Christ forms us to be like Him, removes our impurities, and reforms our hearts. May we all grow in devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and I encourage you to pray the Litany of the Sacred Heart.
We are saints under construction, in the crucible of the Sacred Heart so that we may be pure of heart and see God in all people, all places, and all situations. Have a great week!
In Christ,
Fr. Matt