How can we be healed? How can we see?
“Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.”
On first glance, the beatitude seems to be a promise about the afterlife.
A wise priest once told me a story that he said first revealed to him that this was not the whole truth. I have borne this message in my heart and mind ever since.
This was the story that he told me.
This somewhat mystical priest frequently articulated the truth that suffering can be redemptive. He had been told by his own spiritual director that, in order to be fruitful, each priest must have people willing to dedicate their suffering to the fruit of his priestly ministry.
This priest had actually recruited a number of holy, old widows from Ireland (his native country) and asked them to dedicate the sufferings of their old age to his priestly ministry. He only asked them for this gift if he judged them to be prepared for it after serving intensively as their spiritual director. He told the widows to consider very carefully if they would accept the serious commitment of such a dedication. He even told them that if the Lord sought more fruit from his priestly ministry, they could have an increase in their own suffering. One woman, the day after committing to dedicate her suffering to his priestly ministry, suffered a terrible blood rupture behind her eye which caused her immense suffering. However, these holy women gave of their suffering. And the priest’s ministry (I have witnessed it personally) has borne great fruit.
However, that was not the point of the story. This priest told me that some of these holy woman were granted amazing holiness after their decision to dedicate their suffering. One woman, in particular, he said, never ceased to amaze him. As his spiritual director, he said he had never witnessed such purity of heart. It amazed him.
Very late in life, she began to have visions of visitations of Jesus Christ. She told him about these visions. He said he would have vouched for her sanity. He insisted she was as sane as any other human being he had ever met. He told me that this caused him to reevaluate the way he thought about the beatitude on the pure of heart.
He reasoned, why should God confine himself to fulfilling his promises in the next life? He believed that this woman was living proof that the beatitude can be fulfilled in this life.
Reflecting back on this arrangement with some holy widows of Ireland, I have realized that it as not as unprecedented as I had originally thought. The Dominicans and Franciscans, to give two examples, have Second Orders of cloistered nuns that do the same thing — dedicate their lives, sufferings, and prayers to the success of their order.
It is easy to think of Chastity as a negative virtue — one that you achieve by not doing sinful things. However, it is so much more than that. It is accepting the great gift of God to fit human sexuality into the schema of love that God has called every one of us to. This is true both for those called to marriage and those called to celibacy.
How much sense this makes! When we look at another person as an object, that blinds us to their humanity. But on an even deeper level, it blinds us to the way that Jesus Christ is manifested in them. That blindness is a self-lie. Of course we must be granted purity of heart to see things as they truly are — both humanity and divinity!
Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican, is the greatest thinker of all time borne of the Order that created the order of building the Second Order into their structure and mission.
However, the start of his career was not so glamorous. His parents were outraged he became a Dominican instead of a Benedictine. At that time, the Dominicans were much less established, much less worldly, and much more zealous. His parents locked him in a tower. In an attempt to make him break his vow of chastity and give up his vocation due to discouragement, his brothers introduced a beautiful scantily clad prostitute into his room.
Thomas Aquinas seized a burning brand from the wall and drove the young woman out of the room. He soon thereafter fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed that two angels bound a cord around his waist saying: “On God’s behalf, we gird you with the girdle of chastity, a girdle which no attack will ever destroy.” Thomas Aquinas, armed with this mighty gift, penned the Summa Theologica, a treatise besides which all other philosophical and theological treatises seem amateurish. But in the end, he was granted a vision of God. He cast down his pen and said that all his philosophy and theology was straw compared to the truth about God. The beatitude came true in his own life. He saw the face of God.
Do we want to understand humanity and the mysteries of God (such as are intelligible to our feeble minds)? Do we wish to see our human beings as they truly are without the scales that guard our sight? Do we wish to understand faith, history, and public policy? Do we wish to see the face of God?
Then we must seek the virtue of Chastity with a passion.
Lord, that I may see!