A Pure Heart

Not long ago I posted a weblog titled “The Heart of the Matter.”  Many people read that posting and I am glad. 

 

The heart in song, poetry, literature and even everyday discourse has come to represent the center of many emotions.  Consider a few: heartfelt, heartbroken, heart-ache, bighearted, heartless, heartwarming, heart-throb, heart-to-heart, heart-of-hearts, heartily, hearty, heart-land, heart-and-soul.

 

For the last few weeks I have been focusing on the ‘heart’ of Christmas.  For me, if we don’t focus on the ‘heart’ of Christmas, we miss the essence of the whole season.  It is trite, now, to say that Christ is ‘the reason for the season,’ but it is verily true. Sadly it seems that fewer and fewer know the real significance of Jesus’ mission on earth.  It is a message all should know.

It is the greatest story ever told, but it is a story of which I will tell only in part in this posting.  Just listen to Handel’s “Messiah” and anyone with ‘heart’ will feel the message. 

Let me talk about having a ‘pure heart’—first from an inspired poet’s point of view and then from a Christian’s point of view.

    

Alfred Tennyson, a nineteenth century English poet wrote a poem titled “Sir Galahad,” about the noblest knight of King Arthur’s Round Table.  Two lines of his poem are well-known because of their beautiful message: “My strength is as the strength of ten. / Because my heart is pure.”

We all know, in ‘our heart of hearts,’ if our heart is pure.  To be pure in heart is a most desirable quality.  Jesus, in his ‘sermon on the mount’ said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8)  To merit such a quintessential reward, purity of heart must indeed be a noble virtue. But it is for all an achievable virtue. 

An apostle of the Lord said that the ‘pure in heart’ are those who “are free of moral defilement or guilt.” (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, Bookcraft, 1966, p. 630.) The words “or guilt” suggest that those who may have morally defiled themselves—and all of us have to some degree-- can become free of guilt through the process of repentance and the forgiveness of sin.  The guilty person through the repentance process of having a ‘broken heart and a contrite spirit’ can have God’s complete forgiveness and become pure once again through the merits of His Son’s atonement for us.  With purity comes peace.

An individual in the scriptures gives us an example of “how it is done”:

            “My soul hungered; and I kneeled down before my Maker and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul; and all the day long did I cry unto him…. And there came a voice unto me saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed.  And I, Enos, knew that God could not lie; wherefore, my guilt was swept away.  And I said: Lord, how is it done?  And he said unto me: ‘Because of thy faith in Christ, whom thou hast never before heard nor seen. . . wherefore, go to, thy faith hath made thee whole.’” (The Book of Enos 1:4-8, in The Book of Mormon)

    

I believe that any of us can come to realize great mental and physical strength as we purify our heart.  To do that we must keep God’s commandments; repent when we transgress; and have faith in the One who came to this earth to deliver us.  When we and He work together to cleanse our heart it can once again become clean and ‘pure’ and able to hold all the gifts He came to give us. Peace and power are among those gifts.