Purity of Heart

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Mt 5:8)










Picture from Wikimedia. It is in the Public Domain.


There are several ways we can understand the word “pure”. In the realm of religion, the meaning takes on a moral slant. Purity in thought and deed usually involve the sixth or ninth commandment. We hear the importance of purity in the moral decay of the age.

However, I’d like to look at a more generic meaning of the word “pure”. Like the image above, purity can mean how perfect something is. The image is that of halite, what is commonly known as rock salt. In chemistry, the way a substance crystallizes reveals how pure that substance is. That crystal of sodium chloride in the picture is pure sodium chloride. Yet we can see specks of soil in the crystal. Somehow, the salt crystallized around those particles of soil. Whilst the crystal part is pure sodium chloride, the specks tell us that the crystal, taken as a whole, is not pure. Those specks are impurities. Most pure salt crystals allow light to pass through. You could say that they are transparent. We also gauge how pure something is by judging how clear it is. This is especially true for water. When someone mentions pure water, we think of clear clean water, with no cloudiness or particles, even though the water may have something dissolved in it.

When we consider a more generic meaning to what “pure in heart” means, we can use this idea of clarity. Someone who is “pure in heart” is someone whose heart is clear. Just as we can see clearly through pure water, we can see into the inner being of someone who is “pure in heart”. From the viewpoint of the person who is “pure in heart”, he/she can see things clearly. He/She can see everything as it truly is. If he/she can see Truth clearly, he/she sees God.

So what about the usual meaning for purity? Pope John Paul II uses Genesis 1 and 2 to refer to hearts that are not tainted and so the “pure of heart” refers to the original innocence found in humanity. (see the text of his Audience on 30 January 1980) I believe that if one’s heart is pure and clear, he/she can see the true purpose of his/her body in God’s plan. Gender expression or sexuality is, according to John Paul II and Genesis 1-2, dependent on God’s plan when he created humanity.

In my priestly ministry, I see a lot of moral ambiguity in the world today. The young are bombarded with many conflicting messages. The fashion changes quickly so that a profit can be returned more quickly as well. Hedonism has taken a new face and it is affecting people at a younger age. This means that the situations and problems that used to affect 16 year olds are now affecting 13 or 14 year olds. Adolescent angst seems to hit young people earlier, and girls and boys are engaging in sexual activity earlier than before. Whilst it was rare to hear of a 14 year old girl engaging in sexual activity twenty years ago, now more 13 year old girls are engaging in sexual activity. The world today does nothing but cloud the hearts of people of all ages. Hearts are are getting clouded earlier in a person’s life and God becomes harder to see as a result. This is the challenge of the pastoral ministry in the 21st century.

Additional Rant 0n 20 Dec 2008

Summa Theologica

There are many people who are now reading the Fathers of the Church and the Summa Theologica. I was asked a question why St. Thomas’ teachings are not given a more prominent place in the Church. I was surprised. I said that they were but the person wanted the Summa up there with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Bible. I think we need to get things straight. There is a difference between official revelation and theology — that which is infallible are the teachings of Christ in the Scripture and Sacred Tradition. These teachings are put together in a comprehensive manner in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which saw its latest expression at the end of the last century. The Church never sets out to teach a theology. It sets out to teach us truths that have been revealed through Jesus and the Church.

What is theology? Theologies are attempts to explain the teachings of the Church. In some instances, specific theological explanations were officially accepted to explain truths within the Catholic Church. For example, the Church had officially accepted the idea of transubstantiation as the explanation on how bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ at the Council of Trent. This idea was mooted as far back as the 11th century but not accepted until the 17th century Council. Theological opinions will always be accepted so long as they are not contrary to the truths expressed in Scripture and Tradition. However, they would always be opinions until they are officially (and thus, infallibly) pronounced as part of the deposit of faith. Thus, between the 11th and 17th centuries, transubstantiation had been accepted as a legitimate way of explaining the Real Presence. There was no necessity to accept it as infallible so long as the truth of the Real Presence was believed. It was only in the 17th century, at the Council of Trent, that one had to accept that transubstantiation is the way the bread and wine changes into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Doesn’t this mean that the Church teachings have changed and is thus not infallible? Of course not. Infallibility doesn’t mean cannot change. It means that the teaching is free from error. Unchangeable and error-free are different things altogether. The truths that the Church teaches do not change in the sense that they are true one day and not true the next. However, the way we understand the workings of the truths can change in that we increase the depth of understanding. Thus, while the body of teaching remains the same body of teaching, there is growth in that there is increase.

So, the Summa Theologica is not supposed to be taken on the same level as the Catechism or the Scriptures. For the most part, the work remains a valid way of explaining the truths taught by Jesus, those yet to be officially accepted as part of the infallible teaching remain opinions.

The Catechism mentioned here is the official Catechism of the Catholic Church. Many catechisms published as textbooks for Sunday School or RCIA formation programmes may contain valid theological opinions that should not be considered as official teaching of the Church. An example of this is the question of Limbo. At the earlier part of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI suggested that there was no need for the theological opinion that Limbo exists. Some people began to say that the Pope was trying to change the Catechism and the age old teaching of the Church. In reality, the idea of Limbo was never a part of the infallible teaching of the Church. It was a valid theological opinion to explain where babies who were aborted went. These babies could not be baptised, and thus, not able to enter heaven, nor could we say that they were guilty of personal sins that would cause them to be condemned to hell. Some theologians suggested the possibility of a place called Limbo where these souls could go to. They fashioned this place after the Jewish idea of Sheol which we see in the Old Testament (e.g. Gen 37:35; Is 38:10)

Forgiveness and Mercy

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. (Mt 5:7)




Picture from Wikimedia. It is in the Public Domain.


At first glance, this beatitude seems to follow the ethic of reciprocity (see “Ethic of reciprocity” in Wikipedia), but I think Jesus suggests more than that. I think this is clearer when we rephrase the beatitude thus:

God blesses those who are merciful to others for God will show them mercy.

The blessing is not that people would return the mercy shown them but that God notices those who have been merciful.

What is mercy?

There is an article in the online Catholic Encyclopedia on “Mercy”. For those of us who are more adventurous, the same site offers St. Thomas Aquinas’ treatment on the same subject in the Summa Theologica. I say adventurous because St. Thomas needs some getting used to, especially if we are not familiar with Aristotle and Mediaeval Philosophy. (Please refer to my next short post to read further on what I think is important when reading the Summa Theologica.)

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “Mercy as it is here contemplated is said to be a virtue influencing one’s will to have compassion for, and, if possible, to alleviate another’s misfortune.” If I were to put it in simpler terms, mercy is a habit (virtue) that has two functions:

1. stirs one to have compassion for another person’s misfortune


2. motivates one to try to help remove the other person’s misfortune

St. Thomas Aquinas and those teaching at his time would teach that when a merciful person discerns misfortune or misery in another, the motivation resulting from mercy is in some sense involuntary. Also, mercy must also be linked to charity as it is something the controls relations between two distinct persons.

One result of a merciful heart is the willingness to forgive. For many people forgiveness is like a switch that can be turned on or off. For these people, they will soon realise, especially when they are gravely hurt, that forgiveness cannot be simply switched on or off. Their first misunderstanding is that forgiveness is a feeling. A similar misunderstanding is that love is a feeling. Of course, there are feelings involved in forgiveness and love. However, they are not primarily feelings. Forgiveness, like love, is a decision, what philosophers would call, “an act of the will.” Mothers will definitely be able to identify with this idea. When a child has wilfully done something wrong, a mother may feel very indignant and angry but it doesn’t mean that the mother has stopped loving the child.

A merciful person is motivated to forgive; he wants to forgive because he is aware of God’s love for both himself and the one who hurt him. However, it is very difficult to reconcile the feeling of hurt and anger with that decision to forgive. It is difficult. It is also imperative for our immortal souls to forgive despite our feeling. Now to forgive is not to forget the hurt. Neither is it to forget that anything happened between the two people. Thus, the saying “forgive and forget” can be dangerously misleading. To forgive means to choose to treat a person as if he/she has not hurt me even though I know he/she has. To forgive doesn’t mean I forget and set myself up to be hurt again. To forgive doesn’t mean that I allow that person to hurt me again. On the contrary, to forgive means to give a person a second chance so that he/she would be able to do the right thing and not hurt again. It means that if that person is about to repeat the same thing, I must charitably warn that person of the consequences of his/her actions. I could go on and on about this but I choose not to be too long.

All the above is very easily said, but not easily done. There is one ingredient missing: God. We are emotional beings and we would cease to be human if we weren’t. To be merciful means we need to depend on God. The habit of choosing to forgive and love can only come about if we allow God to heal all the hurts deriving from the offence. Most people find that their emotions go on a roller coaster the moment they try to forgive. To confront a hurt before healing begins is diastrous. One feels hypocritical: I say I forgive when there is this emotion in me that pushes me to hit back!

Healing. That is the missing link between being hurt and forgiving. When someone offends us, we are hurt. Our spiritual being is hurt. Like a physical wound, we need to tend to it and allow it to heal. God provides the healing but we must take care not to cause more damage to the wound. If we dwell on the incident, it is like someone taking out the bandages of a treated wound just to touch and see that it is healing. We know that in any physical wound, constant removal of the dressing and probing would not only not speed up healing, it may even cause the wound to turn septic and cause even more pain. When we dwell on a painful memory, this is what we are doing. We probe and dig further into the hurt, causing more pain. When we begin a healing process by inviting the Lord into our beings, we should leave the ‘bandages and dressing’ well alone. We will feel the hurt, just like in the case of a physical wound. When some time has passed, we may be tempted to return to the hurt, much like a healing wound would itch. We have to let go of the hurt and put it aside, allowing the Lord to do His healing. One of the problems with “forgive and forget” concerns healing as well. If we forget that there is a bandage over a physical wound, we may end up carelessly hurting our wound or ruining the dressing. Similarly, if we totally shut off the incident from our mind, a more devastating emotional upheaval may be triggered by an trival matter.

One of the most common experiences is that the hurtful incident just comes in without one’s willing it. Actually, our memories are not random. We don't just remember things. Memory is associative. We are reminded of something in the past due to something we see or hear or even another memory. One of the best ways to handle a recurrence of a hurtful memory is to immediately turn our thoughts to “what was I thinking of before remembering?” As we consciously trace the memory to its source, we actually leave the hurtful memory in the background. We are aware that it is there but we are focusing on something else, much like when we try to ignore a healing wound that itches. Another benefit can be gained from this exercise: we begin to see what the triggers of the hurtful memories are. For example, if a couple of siblings quarreled over a case of wine, the train of though might be:

Case of wine which was triggered by grapes which was triggered by raisins which were triggered by fruitcake which was triggered by cherries which was triggered by the brand of chocolate called Mon Cherié.

See how something totally unrelated could have ended up reminding us of a hurtful incident. So if we are aware of those things that are often leading us back to the hurtful memories, we might be able to shift our thoughts the moment these ‘risky’ thoughts entered our minds.

How do I know that I am healed? When I can truly laugh off the hurtful incident even if I feel a tinge of discomfort, it would be safe to consider the healing 99% complete.

I know that I will inadvertently hurt people in my speech and decisions. There are times when I will hurt people in my own frustrations. This is something that would happen because I am still a sinner. This is something that I tell myself every time I am hurt. The virtue or habit of mercy needs to be nurtured with time. When I need to make the decision to forgive, I go through the steps above to get healed and consciously make the decision to forgive and love. Ultimately, I know that co-operating with God in this way will help me become the merciful person he has called me to be.

Fair or not Fair?

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (Mt 5:6)


Picture from Wikimedia. It is in the Public Domain.


When we think of someone who is righteousness, we think that he/she would be just and fair. In ancient times, Justice was depicted as a Goddess who had a sword in one hand and a set of scales in the other. The scales would determine if something was just and fair and the sword will be used effectively to ensure that the scales would be balanced.

Just what do we mean by ‘being balanced’ when speaking about something being just and fair?

Do we place the situation we place on one side of the scales and the consequence on the other? Is the charge on one side and the sentence on the other? Or would the accusation on one side and the evidence collected on the other?

When we were children, we usually decided fairness quantitatively. For example, everyone had the same size when sharing a cake, or we all had the same number of sweets. Things became complicated once there was a qualitative element. For someone who liked yellow coloured sweets, how many blue coloured sweets would be equivalent to one yellow coloured sweet? From the time we were able to distinguish quantitative and qualitative matters, we discovered a horrifying truth: There are many things in the world that aren’t fair!

This truth can lead us down many paths in life. We could try to make the world a fairer place to live in — we search out and champion the cause of right. On the other hand we could make use of the truth to our advantage. We could to take advantage of those who are not wise as us in the worldly sense. We could do worse and live with a pessimistic attitude, always being suspicious and lamenting the unfair world that we live in. For those of us who are Christian, we would look to the Beatitude as an ideal in life but could live in shades of the other paths as well.

We often forget the Christian understanding of righteousness when we talk about justice. We tend to confuse God’s righteousness with the human standards of what is right and just. I have heard Christians quoting bible passages and then preach a message that said that God hated sinners! Let us read the Scriptures carefully. God hated the sin but not the sinners! When sinners are ‘punished’ for their sin, it is not with the primary end of destroying the sinner. It was with the intention of purifying the community. This was done with great ferocity in the Old Testament. The story of Achan in the Book of Joshua comes to mind (see Joshua 7). In the New Testament, this same ferocity is seen on an individual level:

If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Mt 5:29-30)

However, Jesus had already taught that this teaching must take into consideration that Christian righteousness is not the same as human righteousness:

For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 5:18-20)

To “exceed” here does not merely mean “more severe” or “stricter”. It means to “go beyond”. We have to reach a higher or deeper level than what the Pharisees and the scribes taught. We usually paint the Pharisees and the scribes as the villains as opposed to Christ the hero in the Gospel stories, but the truth is that the Pharisees and the scribes were learned men whose faults lay in their inability to go beyond what was solely on the human level.

So, what does “hunger and thirst for righteousness” here mean? I believe it is summed up in the last few passages of Matthew chapter 5:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt 5:43-48)

We must seek out God’s righteousness and justice as described by Christ. God is perfectly just and merciful at the same time. He can be so because He is Love. A warped sense of justice comes from a hunger and thirst for righteousness motivated by love of justice. We need to hunger and thirst for a fairness that is motivated by the love for people. God’s love is for people afterall.

As a priest, I find this not an easy endeavour on my own. Like everything else Christian, this instruction from the Lord demands my submission to his grace. It is all too easy to admonish someone who has not followed a liturgical rule or some dictate of the Church’s administrative directives. It is so easy to feel superior to someone who had committed a mortal sin during confession. It is not so easy to help the person to keep to the right path being aware that I am also as weak as the one who had transgressed. I cannot be like the Pharisees and scribes, enforcing law and order. I have to be like Christ, uncompromising on the sin, merciful to the transgressor and directing him/her to the path that leads to eternal life. This is exactly what God’s righteousness demands of me as a priest.

Gentle and Meek

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Mt 5:5)

Picture by Louise Docker, taken on March 03, 2007 at 16:04, in Sydney, Australia. I found it at Wikimedia under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.

The verse above is from the Revised Standard Version, The Jerusalem Bible uses the word “gentle” instead of “meek”. The Oxford Dictionary describes “meek” as “Not proud or self-willed; piously humble; patient and unresentful under injury or reproach; …”

As we prepare for the birth of Christ, we can see these qualities in Christ himself. As described two days ago, Christ “emptied himself” (Phil 2:7). Jesus was born in a humble place: a manger. Although he was blunt with His assessment of the Pharisees and scribes, He remained patient and unresentful despite their treatment of Him at His Passion. His meekness or gentleness is not one of passive timidity or weakness. It is an active kenosis. It is the denial of the self and submission to the will of the Father. It is thus that someone meek and gentle is blessed by God.

Many Catholics in Singapore are very respectful of priests. Sinful priests that we are, we are tempted to take advantage of this reverence that the faithful have. Some of us take on an arrogant stance and look down upon those under our care. The longer a priest we are the more arrogant we become. We seem to think that we know better than the laity. Some of us may even take this attitude with priests who are junior to us! How ‘un-meek&rsquo we are!

In a modern world of specialization, Catholic priests are definitely supposed to be ‘expert’ in the knowledge of the faith. Some of us are even more specialized — we were sent to study a particular branch of theology or philosophy. Yet it is the common experience of everyone that as we study more and more, we discover the vastness of knowledge and realise how little we really do know. Before I was a priest, I studied Biology in the university. There were professors who knew plenty about birds but acknowledged their lack of knowledge for fungi, for example. The proper ‘meek and gentle’ attitude priests should have is to acknowledge that they have a limited knowledge and to read up what they do not know. The ‘un-meek&rsquo way would be to pretend we know and end up giving wrong information and direction. I have had to apologize and retract my words several times just because I have not been meek and gentle. More ‘un-meek&rsquo are we when do not even admit the possibility that we could have made a mistake.

When we say “gentle”, we usually have the idea of handling something gingerly and carefully. I believe that the meek would be given the earth as an inheritance from God because only the humble and patient would be careful enough to look after the earth. If we look at those who have little care for the earth and ecology, i.e. those in the ‘un-green’ camp of things, they are definitely not meek or gentle. Avarice within industry leads to irresponsibility and that leads to a disregard for the health of the planet. Only those who have Christ-like meekness will be good stewards of the earth.

Choosing and Mourning

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. (Mt 5:4)

Picture by James Foster, taken in 1986, found in Wikimedia under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Choosing is so much a part of our lives that we sometimes do it without thinking. Yet we are affected by our choices without realising it. In some cases, we may resent another because we think we are affected by his/her choices. In reality, to be affected by another’s choice is a result of our own choice as well. This is one of the ideas found in William Glasser’s Choice Theory and the counseling process called Reality Therapy. (see Choice Theory and Reality Therapy in Wikipedia.)

The following is based on my own reflections and is not meant as an academic or technical paper. I have used lists to simplify my thoughts.

Let us begin with some basic definitions regarding choices:

• A choice is an option that we choose from a multiplicity of options.


• Each option may have multiple elements.


• There may be similar elements among options.
  Thus, Option A and Option B may be different merely in the addition of a single element.
  → Option A + element x = Option B

For the dynamics involved in choice, we can determine several simple rules:

1. When we choose one option, we reject all other options.


2. Choosing to remain the same means we reject the options for change.


3. Choosing to change means we reject the option to remain the same.


4. There does not exist, within this world, a situation where there is only one single option.

Numbers 2 and 3 are there because we have a tendency to overlook the obvious. Number 4 is not obvious but I think I can illustrate it thus:

Consider a man who is forced to smuggle drugs by a gang who threatens to kill his son. One may think that he has no choice. However, he does. He can choose not to smuggle drugs and accept the death of his son, even though that might not be the natural choice of a loving father. It may sound cruel, but he has options. Perhaps only one option results in the survival of his son but he definitely has more than one option to choose from.

Every option chosen results in the rejection of other options. Sometimes these rejected options are significant to the person who had to make a choice. Let us continue to look at the man who had to choose between smuggling drugs and the life of his son. If he chose the life of his son, he has to mourn the loss of his innocence. He has committed a crime. He has to bear the consequence of his own actions. If he had chosen to preserve his own integrity, he might have had to mourn the loss of his son. Depending on different ways of looking at things, one might consider his options as the option for one life (his son’s) and the many lives that would be affected by the drugs he had smuggled. The morality of his actions are not so clearly defined; it is not a black or white situation. As to whether these are the only two options open to him, we can speculate indefinitely.

Let us return to the beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Every time we make an option for Christ, we reject all other options that may be open to us. The mourning process involves accepting the loss. To accept, we normally look for a reason for the loss. Normally, if there is no reason for the loss, the mourning is longer and the grief more intense. When an elderly person passes away, we usually find it easier to accept his/her death, even if that person was in the pink of health and was infected by a virus. The same would not occur if the person who died was young. The parents of a toddler who had died of the same viral infection would have to go through a difficult grieving process because they would find it difficult to accept the reason for their child’s death. Often there is a questioning period in the grief, looking for a supernatural reason or a person to blame for the infection. When the parents accept that the death is the natural consequence of being present at the wrong place at the wrong time and getting infected, the process of grieving and mourning will reach its end and the parents will find closure. Only when the hurt begins to abate will the comfort that the beatitude talks of arrive.

In a similar vein, we need to properly mourn the loss of options when we make a decision. If we deny the loss and do not mourn, we will not be “comforted”. If we choose to follow the Lord’s way, we would have to mourn the loss of following the way of the world, which, in our own weakness, seems to have a special attraction to us. We have to mourn the loss of all the morally wrong ways of living if we want to live a moral Christian life.

For example, the world will tell us that we deserve to rest and relax on Sunday because of all the hours of work we put in during the week. Yet, if we choose the good Christian practice of going to Mass on Sundays, we will inevitably have to mourn the loss of extra hours of sleep on Sunday or the special television programmes that happened to be on at the same time as the Masses at the parish. We have to accept the loss and the reason for the loss: our choice to keep the Sunday holy and wholly for the Lord. If we do not begin the process of mourning, we will begin to bitch and moan about going for Mass and going on about worshipping God on our own, questioning the need for community worship. Such is the fate of those who choose and do not mourn.

Poor in Spirit

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Mt 5:3)

The first of the Beatitudes is that which highlights the basis for all the other seven in St. Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 5:3-12) In fact, God Himself made himself poor in order to save us. The incarnation of Christ can be seen as a impoverishment. Divesting Himself of the accidents (used here in the philosophical sense) of divinity, God became a human being. St. Paul expresses this in his letter to the Philippians:

… though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
(Phil 2:6-8)

The Son of God went beyond just emptying Himself of His divinity. In His humanity, He even emptied Himself of human life when as a consequence of obedience to His Father, He was nailed on a cross and died.

The first Beatitude has a very special meaning for a priest celebrating Mass. Whilst I retain my personality when celebrating Mass, I am aware that I become Christ during the celebration. For the sacrifice of the Mass is that one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, where Christ is both Priest and Victim (see Hebrews 9). When I lift chalice and paten at the Doxology of the Eucharistic Prayer, it is not I who offer Christ the Victim to the Father, it is Christ. If I am full of myself during the celebration, I cannot be truly alter Christus. In spirit, I must be poor, almost like emptying myself so that I can be filled with the person of Christ. Only when I am truly poor in spirit will I be really aware of the great privilege granted to me to celebrate the Eucharist.