Heart's Pure Vision

Looking out of the window ... I suddenly saw how tenderly, how gently, how warmly, how lovingly Christ bends toward the world. At that moment I also understood the words "cosmic charity," and when these words touched me, they expanded my heart to embrace especially all those who are weak and who keep on falling. 

But then I looked again and I realized that everyone is weak and everyone falls! Does that mean that to be pure of heart one must love everyone? Yes ... I have to open my heart to everyone who is weak, and that means everyone. Now I know why the pure of heart shall see God, and even see him now, because he is in the ones who are weak.  

Yes, he will be in them, in each one of them, and that thought brought me to ... the Eucharist. I saw the bread given to everyone present and I realized vividly and clearly that everyone among those present, including myself, was weak, prone to failing and falling again and again, and somehow I understood with the heart what the beatitude meant.

 From Opening My Heart to Everyone by Catherine de Hueck Doherty.

Through her kitchen window she studies a fading blue sky wrapped now in ribbons of gray. She wishes for snow, realizing, of course, that meteorologists have been predicting frozen precipitation for the weekend. Just once this winter, whose mild demeanor has most assuredly benefited many, she would like to be swept up by snow falling on snow, to be succored by its power to hush a world too busy, too hurried and too fallen. A wish, a hope for new snow, pristine, beautiful and graceful to wash away all bitterness from her soul. A vivid and tangible reminder, too, of the words that have indelibly marked her these few months:  

Those who are pure of heart can see God in everyone.

She had gone away sad, discouraged drawing her pride tightly to herself unaware just then that she really needed to thrust it aside, to tear it away and give it up to the night. Yet, sorrowing, she went away with it. But the words echoed in her dreams and accompanied her everywhere, refusing to go away. The sorrow, too, became her stalwart companion, lovingly nudging,and forever reminding to allow grace to fill her with a marvelous and growing hope. 

Father forgive me for eyes that refuse to see, for a heart stone-cold and marred by selfish desire.

And in the permitting of grace, hope soars and speaks of a heavenly reward. A reward not entirely exclusive to a life to come, but a promise for the here and now for those with hearts pure as snow. She carries this resolution, born out of a time of preparation, of glorious anticipation and celebration, into the new year, greeting each new dawn with whispers of it.