The pure in heart
In his continued examination of the Beatitudes,
Hugh Bates discusses the meaning of purity and the nature of its reward
H
ow can a heart be pure? How can anybody see God and was thus enabled to follow him along the rest of the journey to
live? Nevertheless, the Psalmist could write, ‘One thing the Holy City.
have I desired of the Lord and that alone I seek, that I Purity of heart would seem to be more about the fixed and
may dwell in the house of the Lord...to behold the fair beauty of steady determination of the will rather than the achievement of
the Lord, and to seek his will in his temple’; and again, ‘My heart a clinically sterile soul.
tells of your word, ‘Seek my face’; Your face, Lord, will I seek.’
Similarly, Hezekiah laments that he may never again ‘see the Keeping the heart pure
Lord’ in the land of the living. Isaiah tells how he ‘saw the Lord Being the kind of people that we are and living in the kind
high and lifted up’. ‘Seeing God’, or ‘appearing before the pres- of world that we do, we cannot help but see, hear and think
ence, the face, of God’, are circumlocutions for worship. It is in things that, in our better moments, we would rather not. This
worship that God is both known and seen. is distressing and infuriating, but not a reason to despair. Never
Orthodoxy, we need to remember, is not holding the correct having had to wash is nothing to be proud of!
opinions, but the right worship. ‘God is spirit, and those who There will always be distractions and temptations, worldly
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth’. cares, not to mention the old familiar sins and failings that so
easily beset us.
Ascending the hill of the Lord
‘Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?’ asks the Psalmist, A constant struggle
‘or who can rise up in his holy place?’ ‘Those with clean hands They will not go away, but they are not to be allowed to inter-
and a pure heart,’ is the answer. ‘Such is the company of those fere with the primary object of the exercise, which is ‘to behold
who seek your face, O God of Jacob. They shall receive a blessing the fair beauty of the Lord and to seek his will’. The purity of
from the Lord.’ Put the other way round, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart that sees God is no blessed static condition, but rather the
heart. They shall see God!’ constant struggle never to lose sight of him. Now you see him,
Unfortunately, purity sometimes carries negative and forbid- now you don’t. If practice may not exactly make perfect, it will
ding overtones. Hear no evil, see no evil, think no evil. Alterna- take us a very long way.
tively, it may be largely limited to those topics that are covered We will never be able to claim that we have arrived, nor may
by the obscenity laws. we hope to dine out on what we believe to be our past achieve-
How many have felt themselves disqualified from worship ments. But, in the end, there will be more than the continual
because they have failed to reach the required standard of uphill effort.
purity! Worse, the authorities may sometimes use purity taboos This is best shown in the well-known story of the old coun-
to refuse or restrict access to those who are ‘seeking God’s face’. tryman whose delight and joy was to spend some time each day
King David cursed the blind and the lame: ‘the blind and the sitting in church before the Blessed Sacrament: ‘I looks at him,
lame may not enter the temple.’ and he looks at me’. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart. They shall
The Son of David lifted this curse on blind Bartimaeus, who see God’.
ND
The mission-blockers
Can we counter those who disrupt the progress of a church’s mission agenda?
Julian Mann explains a possible course of action and a change in church rules
I
do not usually remember my dreams, used to be somewhat of an ally but in Nonetheless, mission-blocking in small
but this one was vivid. The toddlers recent times had started hooking up with parish churches is a reality and unless
were about to come into the church the ‘mission-blockers’, those who previ- mission is unblocked, these churches will
for their Monday afternoon service and ously held sway in the congregation but forever stay small.
there I was setting up for them. whose authority is now being challenged
But as I stood at the church door, I by the mission agenda. Special measures
noticed that all the stone steps had been To counter mission-blocking, the
dug up and large, broken paving stones Nightmare and reality Church Representation Rules need to be
had been piled up in front of the door. The Choirs, as many clergy have discovered changed so that churches that pay less
entrance had been drastically narrowed, to their cost, are of course a classic power- than £25,000 per annum in parish share,
and I thought to myself, ‘How on earth base for the mission-blockers. and/or have a congregation of fewer than
are they going to get in, and how on earth It was a great relief to find that when I sixty adults on a normal Sunday, are made
am I going to get out?’ did go to set up for the tots, the entrance subject to special measures.
The person behind this frightening was intact. The dream owed more to anxi- These special measures would be clearly
spectacle was a member of the PCC who ety than to reality. explained to all the members of the PCC
8
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newdirections
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January 2008
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