Blessed are the Pure in Heart

The 6th Beatitude is “Blessed are the Pure of Heart, for they shall see God.” To be capable of seeing God, the powers of our soul must be purified and re-integrated. 

The soul has three powers: the intellect, the feelings, and the will. They were designed to work in this way:

The intellect perceives or becomes aware of reality through the five senses, the imagination or the memory. The intellect then presents its perception of reality to the feelings as “this is right and good for me” or “this is wrong and bad for me."

The feelings respond to what the Intellect presented with, “I like this,” prompting the will to choose it; or “I dislike that,” prompting the will to avoid it.

The will chooses the apparent good; and avoids the evil

The feelings are meant to be good servants but if left in charge they become very bad masters. 

With Original Sin, these three powers of our soul have been wounded.

The intellect has been darkened, we suffer from ignorance and intellectual laziness. It takes a lot of effort to really think things through. It’s easier to feel. So, we let the intellect go to sleep and let our feelings decide what we do.

But we can change the way we feel by how we think.

This practice will start to get the soul back in order.

Let’s say, for instance, you really dislike someone. Your bad feelings for him are making it really hard. Begin with your thinking. Think and talk about his good points, his virtues, and maybe especially the gifts he has that you don’t.

We are all ½ jerk and ½ jewel. You will always find whichever one you are looking for.

Thinking changes feeling.