Reflection on December 10, 1980

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb49.htm

To look on someone with a reductive desire is to look upon them without a pure heart. To have a pure heart is to look upon them correctly, as God would look upon them, as made in the image of God. In other words, to look upon someone with a pure heart, you will see God. I thought that was something worth thinking about. I think we take it as just a cliché, seeing God in others, but it actually points to a much deeper understanding of how we see people and where our heart is. Seeing God in others means to have a pure heart. Every look is a opportunity to practice restraint, to guide our hearts, to curb our desires, to purify that which means the most to our salvation. How much do we take a simple look for granted and not as an opportunity to grow closer to God and the experience He intended for us.

I was thinking about the idea that nothing outside can makes a person impure. I thought of 2 examples that may be off, but I thought they might help. The first is a person that has intercourse outside of marriage. They are physically changed; they have lost their virginity and in some cases become pregnant. If they repent, if they go to Confession, if they are truly sorry and receive absolution, then they are forgiven. It doesn’t matter that they are physically different or even pregnant; forgiveness involves the heart, the interior. There is no physical requirement to purity of heart. I also thought about the victim of rape. Although it should not happen, they may be treated differently if it is known. Although they are physically altered, it has not effect on the purity of their heart. Both examples, I think, look at the idea that nothing outside makes you impure. Yes, the choice to have intercourse outside of marriage caused the impurity, but the choice and acting on it are the real cause, not so much the act itself. The act causes a physical change that can never be taken back, but the choice and acting on it can be forgiven and erased and bring back the lost purity.

I found myself thinking about looking on things with a pure heart, seeing the way God sees. That might be easily applied to other people, but I think it can be taken further, basically to everything. Can you look at nature or technology with purity of heart; see it the way God sees it. I thought that was a step that many could accept, so I took it another step. Look on extremes or terrible things with a pure heart, with the eyes of God. Look on the wreckage of a tornado, the tragedy of a car accident, the death of a loved one, and look on those things that we would think of as evil or not from God with a pure heart. I think when you reflect on how you look on things like that and how it affects you or how you handle it, you will get a sense of how pure your heart is.

As I typed that I thought it sounded very insensitive, but that isn’t God. Looking on something like death and being insensitive or numb to it is, I believe, not looking at it with a pure heart any more than looking at it with overwhelming grief or hatred. I don’t know how God sees death, (my heart has some purifying to do) but it is not cold or numb.