To be near unto God - pagina 417

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gross sinis should first of all be But he who is free from these extherefore, by no means yet pure in heart.

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Purity of heart embraces the entire I'fe of the soul. Pride, arrogance, dishonest practice, anger, hate, falsehood, and so much more, including even ordinary vanity and self-sufficiency make the waters of the human heart muddy and unclean. Whatever does not belong in the heart renders it unclean. As a pond becomes unclean by what passersby throw into it, so the human heart is defiled by everything that God did not create in it, but which has entered into it from Satan or from the world. And the awful part of it is that already at birth so many germs of impurity were imparted unto it, which until death are never wholly lost. That we live in a world which strongly furthers the growth of these impurities. That we mingle with people, who, inwardly impure, accustom us, so long as it does not lead to gross excess, to make light of this impurity in ourselves, and of like impurity in them. This weakens our moral sense, our moral judgment, and makes us dream of a pure heart, the whiles

many

points we remain impure of heart. Jesus had meant that they only go out free, who never caught their own heart in any impure thought, inclination or sensation again, this beatitude would drive the soul to despair. For no one is like this. The struggle with impure germs in the heart continues until death. We make advances, but only by applying an. ever finer test; by detecting impurity in things which before did not even suggest the thought of sin to us. The more we advance in faith, the keener the eye of

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