In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5, Jesus unveils nine spiritual truths that help us map the stages of our growth in Christ. These spiritual truths are often called “the beatitudes,” meaning, “good” or “blessed,” and sometimes are even translated as “happy.” So, the “sermon on the mount” is Jesus’ pathway to the good and happy life.
The heart of contemplative Christianity is conveyed in the sixth beatitude:
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God. (Matthew 5.8).
Purity of heart occurs through the cleansing of the emotions. As our emotional being is cleansed, we may experience an increasing intuitive awareness. This intuitive knowing is beyond our thinking, imagination and sense based rationality, and enables us to respond to others and to life from a different perspective than we normally do.
Our emotional level of being needs cleansing from a lifetime of accumulated emotional pain, trauma, mechanical reactivity, energetic knots in the body and self-absorbed behavior, to name a few. A simple example is the powerful emotion of anger. Sometimes we feel this emotion overtaking us, spilling out from our tensed body and muscles. It is often expressed by raising our voice or hitting something with our fist. Road rage is good place to see this very common emotion of anger.
So how do we experience the cleansing of our emotions? First, by becoming more aware that you are having a negative emotion. This requires self observation. Second, the wisdom of the contemplative tradition has always conveyed that a meditative practice of prayer is essential to obtaining purity of heart, because in meditative prayer, the grace of God’s healing presence and action can begin to loosen up the encrustations of negative emotional energy and replace that negative encrustation with the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit such as love and peace. Thus, for each negative emotion, there is a fruit of the Spirit.
The pure in heart are happy because they are not so entrapped by their own emotional reactivity. There is clarity and peacefulness in the emotional center and this begins to lift one into the new dimension of perspective, one which Jesus calls, being able “to see God.”
The vision of God Jesus has is mind is not actually to see the Divine Being, for this is impossible for humans. The pure in heart see God in others and in themselves and the creation. Francis of Assisi is a prime example of this transformation. But you don’t have to be a saint to experience this. For many of us, we used to see only emotional provocations, now we see spiritual opportunities. We used to see a jerk cutting in front of us on the highway. Now we see an opportunity to practice love and forgiveness.
Beyond purity of heart, there are still other levels of spiritual maturity and growth. Reports from mystic Christians throughout Christian history all convey that following these stages of growth will indeed not only bring the transformation of one’s being but can sometimes even bring one to the beatific vision of God which is beyond all worlds and words.
So, let us give ourselves to the practice of meditative prayer, such as centering prayer or the Jesus prayer. And in so doing, surrender to God’s healing work in us as we are united further with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit who will lead us deeper into the truth, and clothe us further with the raiment of Christ’s blazing, pure holiness and love.
Every blessing in the love of God,
Peter
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