OFFICE FOR SOCIAL MINISTRY
“‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.’ Certainly there can be no love without works of love, but this Beatitude reminds us that the Lord expects a commitment to our brothers and sisters that comes from the heart.” (From Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, “Rejoice and Be Glad: On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World”
A pure heart, Pope Francis says, is: “Keeping a heart free of all that tarnishes love: that is holiness.” He reminds us that “a heart that loves God and neighbor genuinely and not merely in words, is a pure heart; it can see God (Mt 22:36-40).”
This beatitude is being embodied every day here in Hawaii. For instance, Teresa is a beautiful person with a pure heart who, since birth, has had severe physical challenges. She is a member of the Ohana Mass community of persons with disabilities. Teresa was recently selected to be a “malade” or special participant in the Knights of Malta’s May pilgrimage to Lourdes. Teresa was baptized and received first Holy Communion at Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Honolulu. She is in its current confirmation class. Her favorite religious devotion is praying the rosary with her loving parents.
Parishioners held a bake sale to help cover the costs of Teresa’s mother accompanying her on the Lourdes pilgrimage. At the parish Sunday Mass, all were invited to pray over the mother and daughter before they departed and to continue praying with the family during the 10-day pilgrimage. Upon their return, the mother and daughter pilgrims will share what they saw and experienced, further opening the hearts of all to experience and see God in their shared vulnerability.
As Pope Francis says, “This Beatitude speaks of those whose hearts are simple, pure and undefiled, for a heart capable of love admits nothing that might harm, weaken or endanger that love. The Bible uses the heart to describe our real intentions, the things we truly seek and desire, apart from all appearances. ‘Man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart’ (1Sam 16:7). God wants to speak to our hearts; in a word, he wants to give us a new heart.”
In “Rejoice and Be Glad,” Pope Francis shows how practical holiness and the Beatitudes build on the Jubilee Year of Mercy. “‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.’ Mercy has two aspects. It involves giving, helping and serving others, but it also includes forgiveness and understanding. Giving and forgiving means reproducing in our lives some small measure of God’s perfection, which gives and forgives superabundantly. For this reason, in the Gospel of Luke we do not hear the words, ‘Be perfect,’ but rather, ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you’ (Mt 6:36-38). Seeing and acting with mercy is holiness.”
As the Jubilee Year of Mercy closed in 2016, in Hawaii the doors of Mercy House were opened at a transition home for healing women returning from prison. Last month, some women from Mercy House joined hundreds at Chaminade University’s Mystical Rose Oratory to listen to Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, who has worked with gang members in and out of prison for the past 30 years.
In his best-selling books, “Tattoos on the Heart” and “Barking at the Choir,” Father Boyle writes about mercy, forgiveness and compassion at the margins of society where all can learn to be the “tender glance of God” in whose image we are made.
Father Boyle shares stories full of laughter and tears in the hope that our collective hearts will be touched by the “homies and home-girls” who changed him forever and showed him “el rostro de Dios” — the face of God.
For more from Father Boyle about “cultivating compassionate kinship” and the “healing power of forgiveness in our daily lives,” please visit www.homeboyindustries.org.
For more from Pope Francis about “embodying the Beatitudes” and “pursuing practical holiness today,” please visit our website www.officeforsocialministry.org/rejoice-and-be-glad-on-the-call-to-holiness.
Mahalo nui loa.
Your friends at the Office for Social Ministry
