463 PURITY OF HEART

YOUCAT Lesson 463

YOUCAT the catechism for Catholic youth

463  How does one achieve “purity of heart”?

The purity of heart required for love is achieved in the first place through union with God in prayer.  When God’s grace touches us, this also produces a path to pure, undivided human love.  A chaste person can love with a sincere and undivided heart.  [2520, 2532]

As she lay dying in the hospital, 11-year old Maria Goretti’s last words were of mercy towards her attacker: “I forgive Alessandro Serenelli … and I want him with me in heaven forever.” ….. 463

Saint Maria Goretti (October 16, 1890 – July 6, 1902) is an Italian virgin-martyr and one of the youngest canonized saints.  She was born on the eastern side of Italy to a farming family, but increased poverty forced the family to move to the western side of the country when she was only six. Her father died when she was nine, and the family had to share a house with another family, the Serenellis. She took over household duties from her mother, while her mother and the rest of her family worked in the fields. One afternoon, Alessandro, the son of the Serenelli family, made sexual advances to her, but when she refused to submit to him because that would be a mortal sin, he stabbed her fourteen times. She was taken to the hospital, but she died after forgiving him. He was promptly arrested, convicted, and jailed. After three years he repented, and when eventually released from prison, he visited her mother begging forgiveness, which she readily granted. He later became a lay brother in a monastery, eventually dying peacefully in 1970. Saint Maria Goretti was beatified in 1947, and canonized in 1950. Her mother attended both ceremonies.

When we turn to God with a sincere intention, he transforms our hearts.  He gives us the strength to correspond to his will and to reject impure thoughts, fantasies, and desires.  404-409

“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”  Matthew 5:8

“Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery…I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”  Galatians 5:19-21

[2520, 2532]

THE BATTLE FOR PURITY

2520 Baptism confers on its recipient the grace of purification from all sins. But the baptized must continue to struggle against concupiscence of the flesh and disordered desires. With God's grace he will prevail  --Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

- by the virtue and gift of chastity, for chastity lets us love with upright and undivided heart; --CCC

- by purity of intention which consists in seeking the true end of man: with simplicity of vision, the baptized person seeks to find and to fulfill God's will in everything; --CCC

- by purity of vision, external and internal; by discipline of feelings and imagination; by refusing all complicity in impure thoughts that incline us to turn aside from the path of God's commandments: "Appearance arouses yearning in fools";  --CCC

- by prayer:

I thought that continence arose from one's own powers, which I did not recognize in myself. I was foolish enough not to know . . . that no one can be continent unless you grant it. For you would surely have granted it if my inner groaning had reached your ears and I with firm faith had cast my cares on you. --Saint Augustine --CCC

IN BRIEF

2532 Purification of the heart demands prayer, the practice of chastity, purity of intention and of vision. --CCC