John
Paul II - Theology of the Body |
Purity of Heart
General Audience, December 10, 1980
1. The
analysis of purity is an indispensable completion of the words
Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount, which our present
reflections are centered on. When explaining the correct meaning
of the commandment, "You shall not commit adultery," Christ
appealed to the interior man. At the same time he specified the
fundamental dimension of purity that marks the relations between
man and woman both in marriage and outside it. The words, "But I
say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has
already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:27-28),
express what is opposed to purity. At the same time, these words
demand the purity which, in the Sermon on the Mount, is included
in the list of the beatitudes: "Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8). In this way Christ appealed to
the human heart. He called upon it and did not accuse it, as we
have already clarified.
Ritual
ablutions
2. Christ sees
in the heart, in man's inner self, the source of puritybut
also of moral impurityin
the fundamental and most generic sense of the word. That is
confirmed, for example, by the answer he gave to the Pharisees,
who were scandalized by the fact that his disciples "transgress
the tradition of the elders. For they do not wash their hands
when they eat" (Mt 15:2). Jesus then said to those present: "Not
what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of
the mouth defiles a man" (Mt 15:11). Answering Peter's question,
he explained these words to his disciples as follows: "What
comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles
a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder,
adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are
what defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not
defile a man" (cf. Mt 15:18-20; also Mk 7:20-23).
When we say
"purity" or "pure," in the first meaning of these words, we
indicate what contrasts with what is dirty. "To dirty" means "to
make filthy," "to pollute." That referred to the various spheres
of the physical world. For example, we talk of a dirty road or a
dirty room; we also talk of polluted air. In the same way man
can be filthy, when his body is not clean. The body must be
washed to remove dirt.
The Old
Testament tradition attributed great importance to ritual
ablutions, for example, to wash one's hands before eating, which
the above-mentioned text spoke of. Many detailed prescriptions
concerned the ablutions of the body in relation to sexual
impurity, understood in the exclusively physiological sense, to
which we have referred previously (cf. Lv 15). According to the
medical science of the time, the various ablutions may have
corresponded to hygienic prescriptions. Since they were imposed
in God's name and contained in the sacred books of the Old
Testament legislation, their observance indirectly acquired a
religious meaning. They were ritual ablutions and, in the life
of the people of the old covenant, they served ritual "purity."
Purity in
the moral sense
3. In relation
to the aforesaid juridico-religious tradition of the old
covenant, an erroneous way of understanding moral purity
developed.(1) It was often taken in the exclusively exterior and
material sense. In any case, an explicit tendency to this
interpretation spread. Christ opposed it radically. Nothing from
outside makes one filthy, no "material" dirt makes one impure in
the moral, that is, interior sense. No ablution, not even of a
ritual nature, is capable in itself of producing moral purity.
This has its exclusive source within man. It comes from the
heart.
Probably the
respective prescriptions in the Old Testament (for example,
those found in Leviticus 15:16-24; 18:lff., or 12:1-5) served,
in addition to hygienic purposes, to attribute a certain
dimension of interiority to what is corporeal and sexual in the
human person. In any case, Christ took good care not to connect
purity in the moral (ethical) sense with physiology and its
organic processes. In the light of the words of Matthew
15:18-20, quoted above, none of the aspects of sexual
"dirtiness," in the strictly bodily, biophysiological sense,
falls by itself into the definition of purity or impurity in the
moral (ethical) sense.
A general
concept
4. The
aforesaid assertion (Mt 15:18-20) is important above all for
semantic reasons. Speaking of purity in the moral sense, that
is, of the virtue of purity, we use an analogy, according to
which moral evil is compared precisely to uncleanness. Certainly
this analogy has been a part of the sphere of ethical concepts
from the most remote times. Christ took it up again and
confirmed it in all its extension: "What comes out of the mouth
proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man." Here Christ
spoke of all moral evil, of all sin, that is, of transgressions
of the various commandments. He enumerates "evil thoughts,
murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander,"
without confining himself to a specific kind of sin. It follows
that the concept of purity and impurity in the moral sense is in
the first place a general concept, not a specific one. All moral
good is a manifestation of purity, and all moral evil is a
manifestation of impurity.
Matthew
15:18-20 does not limit purity to one area of morality, namely,
to the one connected with the commandment, "You shall not commit
adultery" and "Do not covet your neighbor's wife," that is, to
the one that concerns the relations between man and woman,
linked to the body and to the relative concupiscence. Similarly
we can understand the beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount,
addressed to "the pure in heart," both in the general and in the
more specific sense. Only the actual context will make it
possible to delimit and clarify this meaning.
The flesh
and the spirit
5. The wider
and more general meaning of purity is present also in St. Paul's
letters. In them we shall gradually pick out the contexts which
explicitly limit the meaning of purity to the bodily and sexual
sphere, that is, to that meaning which we can grasp from
Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount on lust. This is
already expressed in "looking at a woman," and is regarded as
equivalent to "committing adultery in one's heart" (cf. Mt
5:27-28).
St. Paul is
not the author of the words about the three forms of lust. As we
know, they occur in the First Letter of John. John spoke of the
opposition within man between God and the world, between what
comes "from the Father" and what comes "from the world" (cf. 1
Jn 2:16-17). This opposition is born in the heart and penetrates
into man's actions as "the lust of the flesh and the lust of the
eyes and the pride of life." Similarly, St. Paul points out
another contradiction in the Christian. It is the opposition and
at the same time the tension between the "flesh" and the
"Spirit" (written with a capital letter, that is, the Holy
Spirit). "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the
desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against
the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.
For these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing
what you would" (Gal 5:16-17). It follows that life "according
to the flesh" is in opposition to life "according to the
Spirit." "For those who live according to the flesh set their
minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according
to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit" (Rom
8:5).
In subsequent
analyses we shall seek to show that puritythe
purity of heart which Christ spoke of in the Sermon on the Mountis
realized precisely in life according to the Spirit.
NOTE
1) Alongside a
complex system of prescriptions concerning ritual purity, on
which legal casuistry was based, the concept of moral purity
also existed in the Old Testament. It was handed down by means
of two channels.
The Prophets demanded behavior in conformity with God's
will, which presupposes conversion of heart, interior obedience
and complete uprightness before him (cf. for example, Is
1:10-20; Jer 4:14; 24:7; Ez 36:25ff.). A similar attitude is
required also by the Psalmist:
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord... / He who has clean
hands and a pure heart... / will receive blessing from the Lord
(Ps 24:3-5).
According to the priestly tradition, man is aware of his
deep sinfulness and, not being able to purify himself by his own
power, he beseeches God to bring about this change of heart,
which can only be the work of a creative act of his:
Create in me a clean heart, O God... / wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow... / a broken and contrite heart, O God, you
will not despise (Ps 51:10, 7, 17).
Both Old Testament channels meet in the beatitude of the "pure
in heart" (Mt 5:8), even if its verbal formulation seems to be
closer to Psalm 24 (cf. J. Dupont,
Les B้atitudes,
vol. III;
Les Evang้listes
[Paris: Gabalda, 1973], pp. 603-604).
Taken from: L'Osservatore
Romano Weekly Edition in English 15 December 1980, page 19
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