ON PURITY
8 DECEMBER 2017
Why do we call her the Virgo Purissima, Virgin Most Pure? A great question for this eve of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
I suppose we call her pure because of her virginity, a perpetual sign of her total consecration to God. But virgnity is but the sign of her purity, a single manifestation. What makes the Virgin Mother pure is her total consecration to God. She is completely his, one hundred percent, unadulterated even by the stain of sin. She is the most blessed exemplar of what God has called us to be: given to him, consecrated only to perfect love.
The purity of perfect love. So, what do we mean by purity?
In the same year this seminary was opened a new product hit the market which promoted itself as 99 and 44/100% pure. They called it Ivory soap. The 99 and 44/100% pure was the result of an analysis by a laboratory which determined Ivory soap had not harmful additives, unlike theca stile soap which had been popular up until that time. What sold it was it was pure. Only soap. It did what it was made to do and nothing more.
Like purity baby products. Made to make your baby better. And nothing else. Or pure cotton makeup pads. All they do is clean you face. With pure cotton and nothing else.
They’re all pure, like the freshly fallen snow…All so perfect, because there is nothing there but the essense of what it was made to be, uncorrupted, clean and pure.
Like a beautiful fresh glass of sparkling cold water on a hot summer’s day, just waiting to refresh you. Just water. Fresh, pure refreshing water.
But sadly, sometimes corruption stains purity. The sinful enters in, and before you know it, we are transformed into something other than that for which they were made.
We become distracted by the bright shiny things….and before you know it, impurities have turned what was crystal clear into something quite cloudy and even rancid. And the impurities are usually deceptive in their means of infiltration…even attractive at first, until they getcha in the end!
Terrible temptations, awful opportunities for corruption arise in seemingly the most innocently tempting places. Even when a little boy chases after his paper boat, never knowing what awaits him in the dark sewer, never suspecting what it is.
IMPURITY TODAY
There’s lots of signs of impurity about these days, I’m afraid. Signs that the pure purpose for which we were made has been colored, corrupted and made into something it was not supposed to be.
I think of Beyoncé at the Grammy’s shorlty after she announced she was pregnant. She explained that her costume was inspired by the Roman goddess Venus, the Virgin Mary, and the African goddess Mami Wata.
And who can keep up with the Kardashians? Kim, the one in the middle, recently commented on the ticking of her biological clock lamenting: “I think if I'm forty and I don't have any kids and I'm not married, I would have a baby artificially inseminated. I would feel like Mary - like Jesus is my baby.”
And what of us? Are we so pure? Do we seek after purity. Do we strive to be only what God has called us to be. Are we more often like Mary or Beyoncé? Like the Christ or the Kardashians?
Our beloved Pope Emeritus onced helped us to struggle with this question when he ofeered a reflection on the words of the Psalmist: He "who has clean hands and a pure heart" can stand in the holy place.
“A heart is pure when it does not pretend
and is not stained with lies and hypocrisy:
a heart that remains transparent like spring water because it is alien to duplicity.
A heart is pure when it does not estrange itself with the drunkenness of pleasure,
a heart in which love is true and is not only a momentary passion.
Clean hands and a pure heart: if we walk with Jesus, we ascend and find the purification that truly brings us to that height to which man is destined: friendship with God himself.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Palm Sunday 2007.)
Let’s take just three of his descriptions of a pure heart.
A heart which does not pretend.
Does a seminarian’s heart ever pretend? Do we pretend that we are the master of our world and that God is so lucky we chose him? Do we wrap ourselves sometimes in a protective cloak of narcissism that shields us from the demands of loving others and the obligation we owe to the truth.
I was a first year theologian and scared to death by all of my brothers who I thought were so much smarter than I was. Plus they were always already piously praying in chapel when I got there…and I had to fight just to get up in time....and to make it worse, all the hot water was gone when I got to the showers! And you know, they’d go on and on after class about how brilliant that lecture had been and how he touched on the real secret of reforming the Church and I didn’t understand a blessed word that he said! And then at the apostolate, where I was supposed to be teaching freshman theology, the kids picked up my every insecurity and went for the jugalur until I almost cried.
So how did I respond? But acting like the king of the world! Burying my insecurities beneath a heavy blanket of arrogant condescension.... I came across as the omniscient, who if the pope would have just had the common sense to call me, would have solved all the problems of the world!
While inside I was a scared little kid, petrified of trusting God, and convinced it was all about to fall apart without a moment’s notice. I was impure. Adulterated by fear and pretending I was God to cover it all up!
A heart which remains as transparent as spring water!!
What a great image. A pure heart create for me O God, transparent to my spiritual Director, to myself and to God! But if I had a nickel for every time I hid something from my spiritual director, I’d have a house on the cape! Because I couldn’t possibly tell him I’d done that! People like me don’t get caught doing that! And I couldn’t possibly tell him I started struggling with that other thing again! That was last year’s struggle and I have grown to full manhood in Christ and no longer struggle with childish things!
And those feelings! How can I possibly say it out loud?! The lust, the pride, the jealousy and all the other unspeakable stuff! I’m a seminarian for God’s sake....quite literally! How can I ever let him know about....?
What would he think of me? He would think I wanted to strive for purity. He would think I was courageous enough to be transparent, to give it ALL to God. To open my arms, with Jesus, on the cross
A heart which does not intoxicate itself with pleasure.
Do we ever intoxicate ourselves with pleasure, so we don’t have to face the truth? And here I speak not of sex or money or stuff like that, but the more subtle intoxication of grasping for power, like the grudges we embrace in our hearts and take consolation from in moments of desperation.
The revenge we plot in the middle of the night and the resentment we feel when “he gets what we know he doesn’t really deserve.” The auto-erotic pleasure of creating a world in my own image and likeness, over which I reign supreme. Supreme and impure with the inclusions of my our self-delusion.
REDEMPTION THROUGH THE CRIB AND THE CROSS
OK. So that’s me, and it’s you. God, what a mess we are! Can such as us ever know redemption? Can the sewage which flows in my veins ever be made pure again?
Yes, says the baby who lies in the crib. And yes, he says again, as he hangs from the Cross for our sins.
For the great good news of Christmas is that we, who are called to purity, to just be what God has called us to be, can be restored as the pure sons of God, unadulterated and living only for him.
For the love of the child in the manger is “the purest love of the purest life.” And in the loving it makes us pure.
“Christ came, and comes now, [she writes] that we should have life and have it in its fullness, that we should be wholly human, wholly natural, wholly supernatural, that in all our loves he should be our life...The way to begin healing the wounds of the world is to treasure the Infant Christ in us; to be not the castle but the cradle of Christ; and, in rocking that cradle to the rhythm of love…” (Caryll Houselander, Wood of the Cradle, Wood of the Cross. 1995)
The rhythm of the Child and his Blessed Mother. Purified and made new, whether you are Charlie Brown or Scrooge.
