Blessed Are The Pure In Heart. By The Rev. Kenneth J. Alden. 1. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

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1 Blessed Are The Pure In Heart By The Rev. Kenneth J. Alden 1. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8) 2. Does this sixth of the beatitudes bring an idyllic picture to mind? A. Do you think of pure, innocent people blissfully gathered around the Lord in a heavenly paradise or, perhaps, multitudes of genuine, loving people basking in heavenly peace with faces up-turned towards the open skies where God is sitting on a magnificent throne? B. What does it mean to you to be pure in heart? 1 What does it mean to see God? 2 Is it even possible to be so pure in heart? 3 Will you see God in a way consistent with Jesus meaning, here? 3. Not everyone who stands before God sees Him. A. What Jesus said of the parables He told applied equally well to the chief priest who interrogated and condemned Him: 1 Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. (Matthew 13:13) 2 As people could hear the words He spoke and see the imagery of the sower sowing his seed but have no grasp of the parable s meaning, so people could hear Jesus talking and see his face, but not see anything Divine in Him. 3 The verse Jesus quoted from Isaiah as being thus fulfilled explained: a. For the heart of this people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their heart, and turn, so that I should heal them. (Matthew 13:14-15) b. It is by no means a matter of the Lord holding anything against them or not wanting to heal them. c. It is their dull hearts that keep them from understanding, as well as the fact that they shut their eyes. 1) In this, the old saying holds true, that we see what we want to see.

2 Blessed are the Pure in Heart 2 d. In addition, their lack of understanding and seeing, as well as their lack of being healed, is under the government of the Divine providence. 1) As the Heavenly Doctrine explains, if people who have destroyed the church in themselves were to understand the Word, they would profane it. (See Arcana Coelestia 3898:2; Divine Providence 260:2) e. So their dull hearts are allowed to keep them from understanding lest their spiritual lot become worse by having their understanding healed by the truth for a time, only to be profaned by reverting to their selfcentered willfulness. 4 We find, then, that some people can have the Lord in full view before them, and yet not see Him. B. The fact that some people may blind themselves to the sight of God explodes a myth about God s unconditional love. 1 It is true that the Lord makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust, (Matthew 5:45) a. He loves His enemies, as He taught us to do. b. He forgives all sinners and has compassion on the filthy in heart as well as the pure in heart. c. But this does not mean that His enemies receive His love, nor sinners His forgiveness, nor the filthy in heart His compassion. 1) It is the pure in heart who see God and His qualities of love, forgiveness and compassion. d. The Lord loves all and stands, knocking at their door, but those who are not of a pure heart do not hear with their ears or see with their eyes. 4. How do we be among those who hear the Lord knocking, open the door and see Him? A. The prophet Isaiah, in pleading that Jehovah would rend the heavens and come down, declares our need to be saved and says, 1 But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6) B. The Heavenly Doctrine also reminds us repeatedly that man is born into evils of

3 Blessed are the Pure in Heart 3 every kind. (See New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine 83, 149, 170, 183) C. If by our heredity we incline to evils of every kind, is there any hope of being pure in heart? 5. Anyone can become pure in heart by the same means we get anything that is pure: by purifying it. A. Whether it is air, water, gold, or the blood within our bodies we are familiar with the concept of purifying it. B. The same holds true for the love of our hearts. 1 It, too, can be purified so that our hearts may be pure. 6. The Lord s mercy is at work in us to purify our hearts from the moment we are born. A. Rightly do we think of children as being in a relatively pure-hearted state, even though we know from doctrine that by heredity they, too, incline to all kinds of evil. B. Before they have use of their intellect, infants are withheld from the inclinations to evil and so enjoy the pure and innocent atmosphere of the angels who surround them. 1 Jesus taught that their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 18:10) 2 By their association with these pure-hearted angels, little children have stored up within them the capacity to see God. 3 The Lord also provides a flowing-in or influx into the human soul that there is a God and that He is one. (See True Christian Religion 8, 9) 4 These gifts from the Lord are enough to get us started and begin the process of purification so that we can truly and profoundly see God. a. So we begin to learn what is right and wrong in His sight, and what we must do to become pure in heart. 7. When we purify air or water, we aim to remove impurities like dirt and germs. A. To purify the heart, removing dirty jokes, pictures, books magazines and websites might be an obvious place to begin. 1 In this context, dirty often describes the lustful fascination with or the unholy sport made of the reproductive organs and their use.

4 Blessed are the Pure in Heart 4 2 Just as we speak of things that are pure being unadulterated, so those that are spiritually impure are often closely linked with adultery. 3 Consider what this kind of adulteration does to the heart. a. Jesus said, whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:28) b. A lustful gaze is frequently accompanied by contemptuous thoughts, especially if the woman carries herself or has exposed herself in a way that excites lust. c. The women lusted after are viewed in the most shallow of ways. 1) They are unappreciated for any of the qualities that should make them loved and respected as wives, mothers, embodiments of the church, or the forms of use they have become in their profession or vocation. d. A husband who turns to pornography not only demeans other women, but it can hardly be imagined that he sees the depth of character and use in his wife when the mere physical attributes of others draw his attention away from her. e. We could say that the impure in heart neither see their wives nor God, for the dirt that is there blocks their sight of what their wives have from God. B. Another kind of dirt on the moral and spiritual plane that is described as such in everyday speech relates to the evil of avarice. 1 Dirty money is money that has been obtained through fraud, theft, or some other illegal activity. 2 Filthy lucre often refers to money loved for its own sake. a. Indeed, the Heavenly Doctrine describes avarice as filthy. (See Arcana Coelestia 1200, 1742, 4911) C. Dirty play is yet another common expression relating to moral filth. 1 It implies cheating, meanness, unlawful and hurtful play in a game. D. As applied to the heart, the Heavenly Doctrine indicates that all spiritual filth arises from the loves of self and the world, when these rule the heart. (See Arcana Coelestia 589, 1326, 2045, 2146, 5721:3, 4911, 7225; Apocalypse

5 Blessed are the Pure in Heart 5 Explained 433:37, 475:10) 1 Thus, to purify the heart, we must shun evils of every kind, although at any given time, we will be singling out one or two evils as the ones most in need of being rooted out. 8. Just as the Lord withholds us from evils during childhood, before we are capable of making rational choices and therefore are capable of using our rational minds to shun those evils, so after repenance, it is also the Lord alone who has power to withhold us from our evils. A. Indeed, the Heavenly Doctrine teaches that those who are most humble freely acknowledge that self is nothing but filthiness. (See Arcana Coelestia 981, 1999 B. Thus, during our regeneration we come to know that the heart from which we operate when left to ourselves is most filthy, and by shunning those evils, we choose to be withheld by the Lord from all that impurity, and to operate from a pure heart given us by the Lord. 1 The filthiness of our self-centered heart never goes away, but it is as if it has when the Lord withholds us from it. 2 That is the joy of repentance and regeneration. 9. As we allow the Lord to withhold us from filthy loves that incline us toward adultery, avarice, fraud, hatred, revenge, and the like, we begin to see God. A. Jesus said to His disciples, blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear. (Matthew 13:16) B. Arcana Coelestia states that 'Seeing' stands for knowing and understanding the things that constitute faith in the Lord, and so stands for faith. For it was not their seeing the Lord and seeing His miracles that made them 'blessed' but their believing. (Arcana Coelestia 3863:11) 1 Likewise, we are taught, the seeing of God spoken of in the Beatitude means believing in Him and having faith. (See Arcana Coelestia 3863:9; Doctrine of Life 17) 2 It also describes those who are enlightened by the Lord when they read the Word, so that they see the genuine truth by which the Lord teaches them. (See Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture 57) 3 When we love truth because it is true, and love it so that we can use it in our lives, we invariably use it to purify our ends, our motives, our thoughts, our speech and our actions.

6 Blessed are the Pure in Heart 6 a. This purifying activity opens our minds to see the truth in the Word, and to see the Lord, for He is His own Divine truth. (See Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture 57) b. When our love for the truth includes its use in our lives to shun what is evil and do good, then we are also seeing the Lord at work in our lives, for again, He is His own Divine truth--the very quality that the term God especially speaks of when used in the Word. 10. Just as our bodies are in a never ending process of purification which fights diseases, filters out impurities and poisons, and keeps us in a state of health, so our spiritual lives depend upon a continual process of purification. A. It is as naive to suppose that our hearts will ever be completely pure as it is to suppose that we will become perfect. 1 And yet the Lord calls us to both purity and perfection so that He may withhold us from what is filthy and imperfect, and give us the joy and enlightenment that belongs to purity of heart. 2 Repentance is the wonderful and ongoing process that enables the Lord to give us ever-more joy and enlightenment. 3 May we embrace this process and the promise of happiness and insight the Lord holds out for us when He says, 4 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 5 Amen. Readings: 1 Kings 3:1-14; Matthew 13:10-17; DP 33:3-5, parts Divine Providence 33. [3]...To the extent anyone abstains from evils as diabolical and as obstacles to the Lord's entrance, the more and more closely he is conjoined with the Lord, and most closely someone who abominates them as being so many dark and fiery devils; for evil and the devil are one, as the falsity of evil and Satan are one. Since the Lord flows into a love of good and its affections, and through these into a person's perceptions and thoughts, all of which derive the character of being truths from the good which impels the person, so the devil, which is to say, hell, flows into a love of evil and its affections, which are lusts, and through these into a person's perceptions and thoughts, all of which derive the character of being falsities from the evil which impels the person.

7 Blessed are the Pure in Heart 7 [4] How this closer and closer conjunction appears: The more removed evils are in the natural self by abstinence from and aversion to them, the more closely a person is conjoined with the Lord. And because the love and wisdom which are the Lord Himself do not exist in space, inasmuch as the affection connected with love and the thought connected with wisdom have nothing in common with space, therefore the Lord appears closer in the measure of the conjunction with Him through love and wisdom, and conversely more remote in the measure of a person's rejection of love and wisdom. Space does not exist in the spiritual world, but distances and proximities there are appearances in accordance with similarities and dissimilarities of affections. For, as we have said, the affections connected with love, and the thoughts connected with wisdom, which in themselves are spiritual, do not exist in space... [5] The Lord's conjunction with a person in whom evils have been removed is meant by these words of the Lord:... the pure in heart'...shall see God. (Matthew 5:8) Also by these words: He who has My commandments and does them...(i) will make (My) abode with him. (John 14:21, 23) To have the Lord's commandments is to know Him, and to do His commandments is to love Him, for we are told in the same passage as well: He who (does) My commandments..., it is he who loves Me.* * John 14:21. Through The Week Recall the Stories In his dream, Solomon s child-like humility and request for an understanding heart led to his request being fulfilled. Jesus said He spoke in parables so that seeing they do not see and hearing they do not understand. Isaiah said it was because their heart had grown dull and they had closed their eyes. Reflect on the Message Not everyone who stands before God sees Him. Born with inclinations to every kind of evil, our hearts must be purified if we are to come to see God. Filthy loves of very kind from adultery and avarice to fraud and hatred must be shunned for our hearts to be pure. In our spirits, as in our bodies, purification must be ongoing. Take Action Watch for anything that may need cleaning by noticing anything in your thoughts or actions that are dirty. Shun everything adulterous or obscene as sin. Shun everything merely worldly and self-centered as sin. Read the Word for truth that may be applied to life, used in purification, and live according to it.