A HEART THAT IS "PURE"

 

GIVEN AT THE LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR 11-6-2023

"When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.”

Luke 14:12-14

One of the Beatitudes that people often misunderstand is this one: “Blessed are the pure of heart.” They often think it has to do with chastity - not having lustful thoughts nor engaging in immoral sexual activities. It really means “doing the right thing while doing it for the right reason.”

As odd as it sounds, one can do a good thing, but do it for the wrong reason and therefore lose any merit it may have generated! Jesus gives us a good example – throwing a lunch or dinner for the very people who will throw one for you. There is no merit in an exchange of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” There is no reward in that because you have already been paid back. Jesus teaches us that if you want God to reward you, it is better to throw a lunch or dinner for those who have no way to invite you in return! What Jesus is actually teaching here is that we should be like God himself who gives generously to people who have no way of paying him back.

We all know that being generous to others is a basic tenet of the Christian faith, but what we have here is a challenge to examine our motives for being generous. Being generous for selfish motives not only voids any credit we might get with God, but exposes our generosity as self-serving.

(1) We can give to God and others much in the same way as we pay our income taxes – a grim duty that we cannot escape.

(2) We can give purely from motives of self-interest. When we give so that we will get a building dedicated in our honor, so that we will get a tax deduction, so that we will be honored in the newspaper, we give from a rationalized selfishness.

(3) We can give merely to gratify our own vanity and our own desire for power and admiration. We can give from a need to feel important and be looked up to as superior.

(4) We can give from a pure heart – simply to help another human being. The Rabbis in Jesus’ day had a saying that “the best kind of giving is when the giver does not know to whom he is giving and when the receiver does not know from whom the gift came.”

God gives his gifts to us simply because he loves us, not because he is going to get something in return. As the Common Preface IV says, “You have no need of our praise and our praises add nothing to your greatness, but they profit us for salvation."

What “purity of heart “means is this: if one gives to gain a reward, he will receive no reward; but if one gives with no thought of reward his reward is certain. Like God himself, we are challenged to give out of pure love, not because we will get something out of it.

A pure heart is both a gift and a goal. Pure hearted people are kind and generous with others without ulterior motives. They show their love by practicing selflessness. They simply want others to benefit from the joy of their giving!