This Sunday we hear the beatitudes of Jesus. We see Jesus as the “new Moses.” He is up on the mount and teaching his disciples (everyone) a new law, one that is to be written on our hearts. A law that is based not on right or wrong necessarily, but a law based on the greatest of virtues, love. For this reflection I wish to focus on just one beatitude, one that struck me in my reading, that being when Jesus said, “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.”
What does it mean to be clean of heart? It means that my conscience is clear of all wrong doing, but most especially free from any harm or injury I cause to another, be it in the plotting, conspiring, and the actual carrying out of maliciousness, slander, or the defaming of one’s character due to my own sinful desire to gain control, the control of another person or position, to make another the scapegoat in order not to deal with my own dysfunction, or even in my own self-deceived righteousness seeing another as in the wrong, in the sin, or the one who is doing me harm.
Some heavy “stuff” going on there. But think for a moment. How often do we hear of and even experience family squabbles that turn into downright maliciousness, a situation in which people not only throw one another under the bus, but then they back the bus up after they have run the person\s over the first time? Think again for a moment of how some people will climb to the top as they say. Some will go to any means to achieve success, some will plot and conspire against their competition until the person is destroyed, all justified because, “I deserve that position,” or “that person is no good, unqualified, or unjust” etc.
Other times it is the group that plots against the individual. It may be that the individual stirs up an awareness of the group’s inadequacies, weaknesses, and even sinfulness. The group in order to protect itself will project its own dysfunction on the individual, i.e. like what happened to Jesus. Jesus became our scapegoat, we pinned our sins on him. Why? Because we were not clean of heart.
Blessed are the clean of heart, how true indeed. I will end with a prayer since “all of us” need our hearts to be made clean, I REPEAT, ALL OF US!
Dear Lord, Show me my faults, the ones deep down inside, the ones that bring harm to others. Help me to recognize my own self righteousness and to be rid of it and to fill my heart with your righteousness, a righteousness which only sees the good in my neighbors. Help me to find the good in all people and that I be an instrument that acknowledges the gifts of others. Help me to put aside all unclean thoughts of pride, self-righteousness, self deception, and most of all the sin of arrogance. “Create a clean heart in me O’ Lord and renew in me a steadfast spirit.” (Ps. 51:12)
Fr. John
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