Insights: January 2005 Archives

When you hear someone refer to "purity" in the context of virtue, what usually comes to mind?

I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.

We tend to think of purity strictly in the sense of suppressing our sexual desires. Or at least, suppressing sexual desire for people we're not married to.

My opinion is that this is exactly what Satan wants us to think purity is. It focuses on how God allegedly wants to deny us pleasure, or worse, our natural bodily urges. Big bad God, denying us something we can't help but feel as humans. This is not the way it is, though.

What is true purity? Purity, or better yet purity of heart, is making choices without selfish interest. In other words, making decisions with the right motives or intentions. Choosing to love and not to use. (John Paul II, in his book Love and Responsibility written before he was Pope, argues that the opposite of to love is not to hate, but to use [for selfish gain].) Purity means having an undivided heart, free of mixed motives. It's the opposite of corruption.

Certainly, this has sexual import. If you look at a person and think of how that person can satisfy your desire for pleasure, that is an impure look. If you look at a person and say, holy cow, God is good! when you see her gifts, that is not an impure look. ;-) If you look at someone as an object of use, as a means for attaining a selfish goal, that is what makes a look (or action) impure. It's not the sexual component that makes it impure, but what you intend to do — what your motives are — that makes it impure.

How can we battle impurity? At its root, as I said, impurity involves looking at someone as an object of use, and not as a person to love (love in the sense of desiring their highest good, apart from our own interests). A very effective way to do this is to find ways to treat the person as a person. A way you can always do this is to pray for the person — that is a form of pure and disinterested love. This might be how such customs arose, but things such as opening the door for someone or doing them some polite kindness is another way. Treating a person with respect is a generic way of treating them as a person. Talking to the person, trying to get to know them and their interests is another way. Yes, even thanking God for the person's beauty or obvious endowments is a way of treating them as a person! (Also they are a movement to prayer, that they would use them rightly in the service of good, and not for evil.)

So the point of maintaining custody of the eyes and avoiding sexual thoughts is not to deny our sexuality, but to ensure we treat everyone, especially those we find sexually attractive, as a person, with their best interests at heart, not motivated by our own pleasure or selfish desires. Sexual love is oriented to total and mutual self-giving. Any sexual thought that is not in conformance with that is an impure thought, as are a host of thoughts that have nothing to do with sexuality.

A friend of mine related to me how some folks in a discussion he was having were insisting that anyone who does not believe Fatima is being unfaithful to the Blessed Mother. I wanted to take some moments to address this.

According to Vatican II Dei Verbum as quoted the Catechism #66, "no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ." This means that with the death of the last apostle, revelation which is binding on all Christians ended. The Catechism goes on to say (#67), that private revelations — which is what Fatima and all other revelations since the death of St. John are — "do not belong to the deposit of faith", that is, that which must be believed by all Catholics. Pope Benedict XIV says: "It is not obligatory nor even possible to give them the assent of Catholic faith, but only of human faith, in conformity with the dictates of prudence, which presents them to us as probable and worthy of pious belief"(De canon., III, iiii, xxii, II). The conclusion is that no one is obliged to believe what a private revelation says, except perhaps the person to whom it was revealed.

Recently, I've been thinking about my favorite musician, Geoff Moore. Geoff writes and performs contemporary Christian rock music, though of a softer variety, maybe more CCM than rock. I would love to be friends with Geoff. I know, hard to imagine a 34 year-old being so enthusiastic about an artist, but I'm not idolizing him, and it isn't the typical infatuation that characterizes adolescent music tastes. I would love to be friends with him because his songs, in both lyrics and beat, express my deepest, most profound emotions. I feel like we are cut from the same cloth, like we are long-lost brothers. (He even looks like me, especially with his Vandyke and reddish-brown hair.) He shares my deepest longings and desires. And I'd love to talk with him about being a "passionate man", about feeling like a child wanting to be a man like Jesus, about friends who are true, who share burdens, who carry us through thick and thin, who listen and cry with us.

It's funny, I even fantasize about him moving out here and joining our church. (Very fat chance, given he's a professional musician, and an Evangelical, and I go to an obscure Arab Catholic parish.) I think of how I'd do my best to treat him as an ordinary person. I wonder if I should hide my passionate love for his music; do I try to strike up a friendship without revealing any common ground, avoiding the "fan aversion" syndrome but risking he won't ever know how much we share, or do I tell him I'm a fan but I respect his privacy and try to convince him I'm not an "ordinary" fan? I imagine he comes to my door and catches my CCM collection, as I try to figure out how to manage the situation if he sees the wide array of his albums.

Anyway, this reminds me of heaven, because I know I will be able to be friends with him in the life to come. I'll have all eternity to make, build, and enjoy a friendship with Geoff Moore. I suspect that to some degree, we'll be friends with everyone in heaven, or at least, we won't have any enemies or anyone we're at odds with, and we'll be like Will Rogers, who said that the only people he isn't friends with are those he hasn't met (or something to that effect).

I think all broken friendships will be repaired in the life to come (and I certainly have my share of them). Misunderstandings will be cleared up. Ego and past wounds won't get in the way anymore. We'll be able to see clearly. Won't that be wonderful?

Back to the topic of prayer, I have come to look at prayer as the purest form of love. Who would even consider praying a prayer with malicious motives? So when we pray for people, we are loving them. When we ask people to pray for us we are asking to be loved. Praying for others and asking others to pray for us is the loop that binds together the fabric of the communion of saints.

I wonder if the saints in heaven aren't spending their time praying for all of us here on earth (and those in purgatory). Loving us, and waiting for us to love them in return.

Inspired by that thought, I have taken to praying for everyone I have an opportunity to pray for, particularly people I have contact with: Drivers and other people who annoy me, clerks and people in front of me who are slow, people who tick me off or tempt me in some way. Also people who are kind to me (these people I ask God to bless). Even people I just notice for no particular reason. Sometimes I think God puts people in my life just so I can pray for them and get credit for whatever good happens in their life. :-) I also pray for whatever people come to mind. I am hoping that such habits can enkindle the fire of divine love in my heart.