The preacher of the Papal Household, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preached the first Lenten homily last Friday. Text at Zenit:

His text is Mt. 5:8, of course. In the first part of the homily, he sets Jesus’ words in opposition to mere external observance and hypocrisy, then delineates three interpretive themes for "pure in heart" we find in the Fathers:

The moral interpretation emphasizes rectitude of intention, the mystical interpretation emphasizes the vision of God, and the ascetic interpretation emphasizes the struggle against the passions of the flesh. We see these interpretations exemplified in Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom, respectively.

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The mystical interpretation, which has its first proponent in Gregory of Nyssa, sees the beatitude in relation to contemplation. We must purify our hearts of every link to the world and to evil; in this way the heart of man will return to being that pure and limpid image of God which it was in the beginning when in our own soul, as in a mirror, we could "see God."

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The ascetic interpretation is fairly isolated in the Fathers and medieval authors. This interpretation focuses on chastity and will become predominant, as I said, beginning in the 19th century. Chrysostom is the clearest example of this approach.[8] The mystic Ruysbroeck, who distinguishes between chastity of spirit, chastity of the heart and chastity of the body, is in this same line. He links the Gospel beatitude to chastity of the heart. This chastity, he writes, "recollects and reinforces the external senses, while, within, it curbs and controls the animal instincts…. It closes the heart to earthly things and deceptive enticements and opens it to heavenly things and to the truth."[9]

With different degrees of fidelity, each of these orthodox interpretations remains within the new horizon of the revolution brought by Jesus, which leads every moral discourse back to the heart.

Paradoxically, those who have betrayed the Gospel beatitude of the pure ("katharoi") of heart are precisely those who have taken on its name: the Cathars, with all the similar movements that preceded and followed them in the history of Christianity. They fall into the category of those who take purity to consist in being separated, ritually and socially, from persons and things that are judged to be impure in themselves. This is a more external than internal purity. These groups are more the inheritors of the sectarian radicalism of the Pharisees and of the Essenes than of the Gospel of Christ.

Food for thought, there.

He then goes on to speak of hypocrisy in the non-religious sphere, which he identifies with the emphasis on appearances in our culture and the blurring lines between reality and fiction. He then turns to the religious sphere:

Hypocrisy seduces pious and religious persons above all, and the reason for this is simple: Where there is the strongest esteem of the values of the spirit, of piety and virtue (and of orthodoxy!), the temptation to affect these so as not to seem lacking in them is also the strongest. "Certain official positions in human society," writes Augustine, "must of necessity make us loved and honored by our fellows. On every side the enemy of our true happiness spreads his snares of ‘Well done! Well done!’ so that grabbing greedily at these praises we may be caught by surprise, and abandon our delight in your truth to look for it, instead in human flattery. So the affection and honor we receive come to be something we enjoy not for your sake, but in your place."[15]

The most pernicious hypocrisy would be to hide one’s own hypocrisy. I have never found in any aid to an examination of conscience such questions as: Am I a hypocrite? Am I more concerned with how other people see me than with how God sees me? At a certain point in my life I had to introduce these questions into my examination of conscience myself, and rarely was I able to pass without a problem to the questions that followed these.

One day, listening to the parable of the talents read at Mass, I suddenly understood something. Between bearing fruit with what one is given and not bearing fruit, there is a third possibility: that of bearing fruit, not for the one who has given us what we have, but for our own glory or our own interest, and this is perhaps a graver sin than bearing no fruit at all. That day at Communion I had to do as certain thieves do when they are surprised in the act and, full of shame, empty their pockets and throw what they have stolen at the feet of the owner.

Jesus has left us a simple and unsurpassable means of rectifying our intentions at various times throughout the day, the first three questions of the Our Father: "Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done." These can be said as prayers but they can also be declarations of intention: All that I do, I want to do it so that your name will be sanctified, so that your kingdom will come and your will be done.

It would be a precious contribution to society and the Christian community if the beatitude of the pure of heart would help us to maintain alive in us the nostalgia for a world that is clean, true, without religious hypocrisy or nonreligious hypocrisy; a world in which actions corresponded to words, words to thoughts, and the thoughts of man to those of God. This will only fully happen in the heavenly Jerusalem, the city made of crystal, but we must at least strive for it.

An author of fables wrote a fable called "The Glass Town." In the story a young girl ends up by magic in a town made of glass: glass houses, glass birds, glass trees, people who move like graceful glass statues. But nothing in this town breaks because everyone has learned how to move about in it with care so as not to do any damage. Upon meeting each other, the people answer questions before they are even asked them because even thoughts are evident and transparent in this town; no one tries to lie, knowing that everyone can read what is on his mind.[16]

We shudder to think what would happen if this suddenly occurred here among us; but it is salutary to at least tend toward such an ideal. This is the road that will carry us to the beatitude that we have tried to comment on: "Blessed are the pure of heart for they will see God."