St. Alice

PURITY OF HEART
From a sermon by Isaac of Stella2
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“HAPPY are the pure in heart, they shall see God.” Once love is present there
too is longing to see what is loved… Those alone who have purified their hearts shall
see him, because it is solely by a pure heart that God can be seen. And I ask you
frankly, brothers, of what use are all our years of such effort if we have not made our
hearts clean? Perhaps we have indeed purified our hearts for the sake of virtue?
Well, now they must be purified for the sake of truth. And if we have already
cleansed them for loving, now they must be made clean for seeing…
When the Lord purifies the eye of a man’s mind, enabling him to perceive
truth, he is indeed giving a blind man his sight. It must be clearly understood, then,
that when we speak of purity of heart, we do not mean simply that the heart is to be
purified from vices, call them disordered desire or perverted love, but that it must
be purified from the phantasies that are absorbed by the corporeal senses and
remain in the imagination, for these become an obstruction that prevents our seeing
the sun’s clear light. They either cut us off from that solar body, the very source of
light itself (they are so unlike it) or at least they reduce the sun’s brightness…
Don’t let this discourage you! Once you have passed through all these clouds
by vigilance of mind and purity of heart, once your every thought is silent, or, rather,
left far behind then, at last, brothers, there will appear before you a shining cloud, “a
cloud filled with light”, not stormy now nor dense, a cloud of wisdom, not of
ignorance.

For there is darkness in light, darkness all the deeper in much light, until
finally, when the light reaches the threshold of its own incomprehensibility and
enters that unapproachability in which dwells “ that peace which passes all
understanding,” it is taken from our eyes so that any further knowledge of the Light
is obtained not through speculation but through revelation, just as the apostles
gazing heavenward, learned from the men who stood beside them in white
garments…
So now you know from what things the heart must be purified and to what
extent, and for what purpose, namely, to be able to gaze upon the Being who is
Perfection unlimited, who is Beauty without quality, Greatness without extension,
Presence uncircumscribed by place, Existence beyond time. But without this
purification it is impossible to see God and so he tells us: “Happy are the pure in
heart, they shall see God.” Here, “a confused reflection; there, as he is.”…
To speak plainly, brothers, no man can be fully and perfectly spiritual nor can
he be ready to go out with tranquil mind from his tent in the leisure of
contemplation, unless he has first rid his home of vice, that is, of all perverted and
disordered love, and has furnished and decorated it with good habits, and left it
fortified with a strong guard of virtues. Otherwise, the adulterous unclean spirit… if
he find “the house swept clean and put in order,” but empty of virtues, may make his
way in by force or favor and take possession, protecting himself with a bodyguard of
seven associates more evil than himself… Then indeed, “the last state of this type of
spiritual a man is worse than the first”. He who began in the Spirit is now ending
with the flesh, or rather, is ended by the flesh.
If a man desires to be truly spiritual, let him first pay attention to his desires
rather than to his ideas, to his way of life rather than his form of meditation. For he
must first use his feet to walk before soaring into flight. And since he cannot always
be in flight, let him go about sensibly on foot lest he suddenly crash down.

2 Isaac of Stella. Sermons on the Christian Year: Volume One. CF 11. Trans. Hugh McCaffery.
Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1979. 29-34.