Blessed Are the Pure of Heart

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The 6th Beatitude is Blessed are the Pure of Heart, for they shall see God. Pope Benedict says that to be capable of seeing God, the powers of our soul must be purified and re-integrated. 

I don’t know about the statistics but I can tell you a lot of people don’t know they have a soul, let alone what it is or how it’s supposed to work. 

They think they have a body and a brain, just a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions and maybe some spiritual component some call a soul.

But every person has a soul made after the image of God. When it works the way God designed, it is the very capacity to share in God’s divine life, to be like God and live like God. The soul can be a source of brilliance, deep emotion and love. When it is not used as it should it is the source of deep pain and confusion, painful emotions, hate and despair.

There are three powers of the Soul: Intellect, Feelings (otherwise known as passions or emotions) and the Will. These three are supposed to work this way:

1.  The intellect was made for truth. When the intellect perceives reality correctly, we have truth. The intellect perceives (becomes aware of) reality through the five senses, the imagination or the memory. The intellect then presents it to the feelings as “Hey, this is right and good for me” or “Hey, this is wrong and bad for me."

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Then 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.

3.  The will chooses the apparent good; avoids the evident evil

2.  With Original Sin our soul is out of whack.

We don’t exercise our intellect. It takes a lot of effort to exercise the intellect and think. It is easier to feel. So we let the intellect go to sleep and let our feelings decide what we do. We let feelings rule our life. We are ruled by likes and dislikes. That might be ok except for the fact that with a fallen human nature I often like what is bad for me and dislike what is good for me.

Thinking should inform our feelings which prompt our choices.

Therefore, the Intellect should guide our life. So the first step to reintegrating our soul is to feed our intellect with what it needs – truth.

How do we know what is true? Three ways:

1.          Through experience.

a.  But harmful and even deadly experiences can be avoided by reason and revelation

2.          Through careful consideration, 

a.  this is reason

3.          And by learning the truths of our Catholic Faith,

a.  which is Revelation, handed down by Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium, the official teaching of the Catholic Church

1.  The best synthesis of this is found in the CCC

2.  I have free a podcast on the CCC found at…

3.  And just keep following this Rosary podcast because its purpose is to teach you the truths of the faith in bite-sized digestible portions daily.

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The second power of the soul are the passions.

We also call them emotions or feelings. They prompt or propel the will to choose and act. But often my feelings prompt me to like what is bad for me and dislike what is good for me.

We can change the way we feel by how we think.  If we Mentally focus on the pleasing aspects of what’s good and the displeasing aspects of what’s bad our desires will change. By thinking, imagining, visualizing or anticipating some good thing we actually cause the right feeling, prompting the right action because we desire what looks good to us.

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. If you think and talk about the person in those terms long enough, you’ll be constantly reminded of how much there is to appreciate about this person, and you’ll actually begin to appreciate him and it’ll be easier to treat him charitably.

Again, you should use this strategy to avoid evil. Say you want to gossip about someone – you can picture in your head how awkward it’ll be if what you’ve been saying gets back to that person. Or you can use St. James’ image, about how a small flame – gossip – can burn down a whole forest of good. Whatever image works to help you realize how deadly gossip is, use that, focus on that, picture that. And eventually your desire to gossip will fade.  

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We can change the way we feel by how we act

If you do the right thing, over and over, even if you don’t feel like it, eventually you will begin to like it. It becomes pleasing to the emotions, then they prompt the right action and it results in a good habit, a virtue.

Most people don’t start out liking exercise, but if they keep at it they begin to look forward to their morning run. People usually don’t start out enjoying prayer, but if they pray anyway, day after day, they get to the point where they can’t do without it. The same goes for abstaining from bad behavior you’re inclined to: if you have a bad temper, you’ll want to say horrible things when you get angry. But if you resist the urge to lash out and choose to hold your tongue, the anger will fade and the desire to be undisturbed by others will grow.

If we resist the wrong feelings and do the right actions long enough, the bad desires will fade and the right desires will grow – prompting you to the right actions.

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We cannot reintegrate the powers of our soul alone.

At the Last Supper Jesus looked across the table at the Apostles and said to them: Apart from me you can do nothing. The plan was never to transform ourselves. We are powerless on our own.

Jesus wants to live in our soul to heal, elevate and transform us to a divine way of being and living. He wants to live through us if we would only let him. We can begin to allow Jesus to live through us first by receiving His divine life through Baptism and the Eucharist. And we can allow Jesus to heal our soul after sin by the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

We open our soul to allow Jesus to act by spending time with him in friendship – which is prayer – talking to him, listening to him by reading and reflecting on his teachings and just being with Him in silence and solitude. Either we spend time with Jesus in prayer so that he can live through us or we are choosing to go it alone.

Our souls were made to become like God. Imagine having the best painter or musician as your instructor, carefully guiding you to be like them. Would you turn to them and say, “No, I think I’ve got this.” Or would you sit down, shut up, and follow their every instruction?