How to Grow in Purity of Heart

A virtue broader than chastity alone

The first misunderstanding to clear away is the belief that purity comes down to sexuality. A man can be perfectly continent and keep a double heart: self-interested, calculating, full of resentment, secretly attached to an idol — money, self-image, power. Chastity of the body is not enough to make the heart pure if the will remains divided between God and something else.

The purity spoken of in the sixth beatitude is therefore a limpidity of the whole heart. It aims at intention as much as at the senses, at memory as much as at imagination, at one's relationship to money and to one's neighbor as much as at one's relationship to the body. That is why the Catechism places purity of heart under the ninth commandment ("You shall not covet") and not under the sixth alone: it governs the root of all covetousness, and not only carnal covetousness.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God"

The highest reason for seeking this purity is its promise: to see God. No other beatitude promises so much. Yet Scripture also affirms that "no man shall see me and live" (Ex 33:20)^[3]. The Fathers meditated on this paradox: the vision of God is not owed to nature, but to grace, which makes us like him — "we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 Jn 3:2)^[4]. The Catechism holds both ends together:

"'To the pure in heart' is promised that they will see God face to face and will be like him. Purity of heart is the prerequisite for the vision. Even now it enables us to see according to God [...]." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2519^[5]

The decisive word is "even now". Purity of heart does not open only onto the beatific vision of the hereafter: it begins to make God visible here below, in prayer, in one's neighbor, in creation. The more the heart is purified, the clearer the gaze becomes; like a windowpane being cleaned lets through more light. On the sixth beatitude within the whole of Christ's discourse, see The Beatitudes.

The heart, secret root of the whole moral life

Scripture places in the heart the hidden center of the person — not the seat of feeling, as in modern language, but the deep place where what man wills, loves and chooses is decided. Christ traces good and evil back to it:

"Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 15:19^[6]

The Catechism draws the direct consequence: "The heart is the seat of moral personality. [...] The struggle against carnal covetousness entails purifying the heart and practicing temperance"^[7]. In other words, the decisive battle is fought not first in deeds, but upstream, in the source from which they flow. One can watch over one's conduct for a long time without touching the heart; but one cannot durably purify conduct without purifying the heart. That is why purity of heart is not one virtue among others: it is the root from which the other virtues receive their uprightness.

Before the means, a just definition is needed. Many fail to grow in this virtue because they aim at a caricature of it: sometimes mere bodily continence, sometimes an anxious moral cleanliness. Purity of heart is something else entirely, and naming it exactly is already half the journey.

The "heart" in the Bible: the hidden center of the person

In Scripture, the heart is not the seat of emotions, but the deep center of man: where he stands before God, makes his decisions, fixes his treasure. Christ links heart and treasure in a spiritual law: "For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be" (Mt 6:21)^[8]. Everything therefore depends on what the heart loves: it becomes what it leans toward. To purify the heart is not to empty it, but to restore to it its true treasure — God — instead of the idols that divide it.

It is also the heart that commands the gaze. Christ says it through the image of the eye: "The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light" (Mt 6:22)^[9] — sound rendering haplous, "simple, undivided." A unified heart gives a luminous gaze; a divided heart, a troubled gaze. Purity of heart is this simplicity of gaze that sees straight because it wills one single thing.

Purity of heart: willing one thing

The contrary of purity is not only impurity: it is duplicity, the heart divided between two loves. Saint James names this sickness with one word: the double-minded soul, literally "of two souls," and he gives its remedy:

"Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you of two minds." — Letter of Saint James 4:8^[10]

Purity of heart is therefore first an unification. Christ posed it as an alternative with no middle ground: "No one can serve two masters [...]: you cannot serve God and mammon" (Mt 6:24)^[11]. The pure heart is the one that has ceased to serve two masters, that no longer leads a double interior life, that wills one thing — like Mary of Bethany, of whom Christ says that she "has chosen the better part," when only one thing is necessary (Lk 10:42)^[12]. The whole spiritual tradition has seen there the secret of purity: not multiplying efforts, but simplifying the heart.

The three domains of purity of heart

The Catechism refuses to reduce purity to a single field. It unfolds it in three domains where intellect and will must be attuned to God's holiness:

"'Pure in heart' refers to those who have attuned their intellects and wills to the demands of God's holiness, chiefly in three areas: charity, chastity or sexual rectitude, love of truth and orthodoxy of faith. There is a connection between purity of heart, of body, and of faith." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2518^[13]

This threefold face is precious, because it forbids any one-sided purity. The following table fixes it.

Reading the table: these three purities stand together. A heart pure in faith but hard in charity is not pure; a chaste body but a lying mind is not either. Purity of heart is the unity of these three limpidities. That is why this article, without duplicating the article on chastity, takes purity in its full breadth.

Purity of heart, purity of intention, purity of vision

Tradition distinguishes, within this virtue, several limpidities that must be named in order to cultivate them. Confusing them leads to aiming at one while believing one aims at another.

Reading the table: these realities fit inside one another. Guarding the gaze protects; purity of intention directs; chastity integrates the body; simplicity unifies; and all open onto purity of heart, which opens onto the vision of God.

Like every virtue, purity of heart stands at the summit between two abysses. By deficiency, one falls into the divided heart; but by distortion, one falls into a false purity that tends the outside and neglects the inside. Knowing both protects growth, for one can miss this virtue by falling on either side.

By deficiency: the divided heart and the secret idol

The first defect is duplicity: the heart divided between God and an idol. This idol is not always a gross one; it is often respectable — success, the esteem of others, a possessive affection, a cherished resentment, an attachment to money. The heart that serves "two masters" (Mt 6:24) believes it loves God, but keeps a door open elsewhere; and that half-open door is enough to trouble the whole interior gaze. Duplicity is not only lying to others: it is lying to oneself, the art of not seeing what one secretly loves.

This is the edge by deficiency: the one onto which one slides when the heart is no longer unified, when one maintains a reserved zone withheld from God, when one comes to terms with a habit one does not truly want to leave. The remedy is not effort first, but truth: letting God's light name the idol, so as to be able to hand it over to him.

By distortion: false pharisaical purity

The opposite error is subtler, for it wears the appearance of virtue. It is outward purity without the heart: one tends the correctness of deeds, the reputation for honesty, scrupulous observance, but leaves the inside full of pride, judgment and covetousness. Christ struck this counterfeit with rare violence:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 23:25-26^[14]

Here is the decisive reversal: true purity goes from the inside outward, not the reverse. A purity that would tend only the surface — dress, language, image — without touching the heart would not be a virtue, but a veneer. The sister of this false purity is anxious scrupulosity, which takes imaginary stains for the whole of the spiritual life and forgets charity. True purity of heart, on the contrary, is peaceful: it comes from love, not from fear.

The happy medium: a simple and unified heart

Between these two edges, virtue stands in a luminous balance: a simple heart. It is pure, for it refuses the idol; it is unified, for it wills one thing; it is peaceful, for it is turned toward love and not toward self-image. The following table fixes this discernment.

Reading the table: purity of heart is not a fragile point between two dangers, but a fullness that holds together what each defect separates — the truth of the inside and the uprightness of the outside. One grows by moving away from both edges at once: neither a double heart, nor a heart of facade.

Purity of heart is not a state one would either have or not have, but a path one walks in stages. As with chastity, the Catechism speaks of a "purification" of the heart — that is, a progressive work, never completed here below.

A progressive purification, never completed

First law: one does not become pure in heart once and for all. Purification is the work of a lifetime, to be taken up again at every age, for idols are reborn and the gaze grows troubled anew. The Catechism sums up the means of this continual purification:

"Purification of the heart demands prayer, the practice of chastity, purity of intention and of vision." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2532^[15]

This word delivers from two opposite illusions: believing one has "settled the matter" (the presumption that precedes the fall), and believing one will "never" get there (the discouragement that justifies giving up). Purity of heart is not acquired like capital; it is maintained like health, by a daily hygiene constantly resumed.

What God alone can purify

Second law, and the most consoling: there is a depth of the heart that we cannot purify ourselves. Beneath the faults we see remain roots we do not see — old attachments, wounds, buried pride. That is why the psalmist's prayer does not say "I purify," but "create in me":

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a steadfast spirit within me." — Psalm 51:12^[16]

God alone creates a pure heart, as he drew the world from nothing. And he promised it through the prophets: "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean [...]. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you" (Ezek 36:25-26)^[17]. The practical consequence is immense: the first means of growing in purity is not tensing up, but asking. The decisive purification is passive — it is received. This purification that God works himself, often through trials and dryness, is what the masters of prayer call the "night": see How to Grow in Prayer.

Patience and confession in relapses

From these two laws follows a consequence: one needs patience with oneself. Impatience with one's own impurities is a ruse of self-love, which cannot bear to see itself imperfect. He whose heart grows troubled anew must rise without drama and begin again. See How to Grow in Patience.

The privileged place of this rising is confession, which not only erases the fault but restores grace and revives the will. Regular confession is, for purity of heart, what regular care is for a convalescence: it prevents stains from accumulating and breaks the circle of discouragement. See How to Grow in Regular Confession.

Here is the practical heart of this article. The Catechism itself lists the means of the fight for purity: the virtue and gift of chastity, purity of intention, purity of vision, and prayer^[18]. Spiritual tradition adds the fight against thoughts, the Word of God, the sacraments, detachment and charity. Let us unfold these worksites.

Asking for a pure heart as a grace

First means, and the most fundamental, because purity of heart is a gift: asking for it. One does not give oneself a new heart; one receives it. The prayer of Psalm 51 — "Create in me a clean heart" — is the model prayer of the fight for purity: it is repeated in temptation, in dryness, after the fall. Asking, especially at the very moment when purity is lacking, is already exercising it, for this request is an act of humility that disarms presumption before it falls.

Purity of intention: doing everything for God alone

The second means is purity of intention: acting for God, not for self, nor for the image one draws from it. The Catechism defines it as "seeking the true end of man" (CCC § 2520): referring to God, by the simple gaze of the heart, all that one does. It is purity of intention that purifies action at its source — for one and the same deed changes color according to the motive that inspires it. Saint Faustina makes of it a treasure:

"Everything lies in intention. Therefore, do not neglect small things. O inexhaustible treasure of purity of intention, which renders all our actions perfect and so pleasing to God!" — Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary, § 66^[19]

The same intuition runs through the Imitation of Christ, which makes purity one of the two wings by which man rises:

"Man rises above the earth on two wings: simplicity and purity. Simplicity must be in intention, and purity in affection. Simplicity seeks God, purity finds him and tastes him." — The Imitation of Christ, book II, ch. 4^[20]

This purity of intention is therefore the nerve of growth: it is not a matter of doing greater things, but of doing each thing for God. Working, eating, resting, speaking — everything becomes pure as soon as intention directs it toward him.

Guarding the heart and guarding the gaze

The third means is guarding the heart (custodia cordis) joined to guarding the gaze. Since the heart fixes its treasure by what it looks at, purity is guarded first at the gates of the senses. The Catechism explicitly ranks among the means "purity of vision, external and interior," and "discipline of feelings and imagination" (CCC § 2520)^[21]. Turning one's eyes away from an image, a screen, a scene; not feeding a reverie, a resentment, an unhealthy curiosity: this is putting out the fire at the match rather than fighting it once it has taken the whole house.

To this guarding of the senses, tradition joins modesty, which the Catechism calls the "guardian" of interiority: it "protects the mystery of persons" and inspires the manner of dressing, looking and speaking, not from contempt for the body but from respect for its mystery^[22]. On watching over the first movements of the heart, see How to Grow in Spiritual Vigilance.

The fight against thoughts

The fourth means comes from the Desert Fathers, who made purity of heart the very goal of the spiritual life. They understood that the heart is defiled first by the thoughts (logismoi) one welcomes and entertains. The fight does not consist in having no evil thought — they arise in spite of us — but in not giving them hospitality: spotting them from birth, refusing to feed them, handing them back to God at once. John Cassian, who transmitted the wisdom of the monks of Egypt to the West, places the seat of everything there:

"Everything lies in the deep sanctuary of the soul. When the devil has been driven out of it and vices no longer reign there, consequently the reign of God is established in us." — Saint John Cassian, Conferences, I^[23]

On this tradition of the desert, of which purity of heart is the soul, see The Desert Fathers. This fight of thoughts also calls for interior silence, which lets the tumult subside so that the heart grows calm: see How to Grow in Interior Silence.

The Word of God and the prayer that purify

The fifth means is frequenting the Word of God and prayer. Christ says to his disciples: "You are already clean because of the word that I have spoken to you" (Jn 15:3)^[24]. The Word meditated upon washes the heart of its false thoughts like clear water, by bringing God's truth into it. Prayer, for its part, is named by the Catechism among the first means of purification (CCC § 2520): it is by standing long under God's gaze that the heart gradually learns to see as he does. On the silent prayer that purifies the gaze, see How to Grow in Prayer.

The sacraments: confession and the Eucharist

The sixth means is recourse to the sacraments. Confession does not only remit faults: it restores the limpidity of the heart, undoes the bonds of sin and breaks discouragement. The Eucharist, received in a state of grace, is the fire that purifies: it feeds the heart with Him who is purity itself and strengthens against covetousness. Frequent Communion, made with faith, is thus one of the most powerful weapons of purity of heart. See How to Grow in Frequent Communion.

Detachment and simplicity of life

The seventh means is detachment. Since the heart divides in the measure that it attaches itself, it is purified in the measure that it detaches itself. Detaching oneself from goods, from esteem, from possessive affections is not despising these things: it is ceasing to make idols of them, so as to keep only one treasure. This stripping makes the heart simple and transparent — capable of letting God's light pass through without holding it back for itself. On this path, see How to Grow in Detachment.

Charity, in which purity of heart is completed

The eighth means, finally, is the highest: charity. The Fathers of the desert had grasped that purity of heart is not an end in itself, but the antechamber of love. John Cassian teaches it in his first Conference: the ultimate end of the Christian is the Kingdom of God; his immediate goal is purity of heart, without which one cannot reach the end^[25]. And this purity of heart, he specifies, is nothing other than charity^[26]. Saint Paul already said it: "The aim of this instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith" (1 Tim 1:5)^[27]. One does not grow in purity of heart by loving less, but by loving better: a heart that learns to give itself gradually ceases to seek itself, and it is this gift that purifies it. See How to Grow in Charity.

By what does one recognize that one is truly growing in purity of heart? Not by a feeling of invulnerability — which would be presumption — but by stable fruits that tradition describes with constancy.

Seeing God begun even here below

The first fruit is vision: not yet vision face to face, but its firstfruits. As the heart is purified, God becomes visible — in prayer, in Scripture, in events, in one's neighbor. Saint Gregory of Nyssa gave of this mystery the most famous image: the purified heart becomes a mirror in which divine beauty shines, like iron freed from rust finally reflects the sun.

"Just as iron, freed from rust by the stone, reflects the rays of the sun, so the interior man — whom the Lord calls the heart —, once the rust that tarnished its beauty is removed, recovers the likeness of its Archetype. [...] Having a pure heart, he becomes blessed, because, looking upon his own purity, he contemplates in the image the Archetype." — Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Beatitudes, 6th homily^[28]

This is exactly what the Catechism says in other words: purity of heart, "even now, [...] enables us to see according to God" (CCC § 2519). Saint Augustine had laid down the principle: it is not with the eyes of the body that God is seen, but with the heart purified, "for he cleansed their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9)^[29]. And Saint Thomas Aquinas linked this beatitude to the gift of understanding, by which the Holy Spirit makes the interior gaze capable of penetrating divine things^[30]. Purity of heart is therefore not only moral: it is luminous, it gives sight.

Simplicity, peace, and the light of discernment

The second fruit is simplicity. The heart that has ceased to serve two masters also ceases to divide itself, to calculate, to lie to itself; it becomes straight, transparent, at peace. From this simplicity is born a light of discernment: the pure heart judges more justly, because no covetousness comes to cloud its gaze. "To the pure all things are pure," says Saint Paul (Tit 1:15)^[31]: not that all things are permitted to them, but that their gaze, no longer sick, sees good where it is and evil where it is, without projecting its own defilement.

A pure gaze upon one's neighbor and creation

The third fruit, which crowns the others, is a renewed gaze upon others and upon the world. The Catechism says it: purity of heart enables us to perceive others as "neighbor" and to recognize in the human body — our own and that of others — "a temple of the Holy Spirit, a manifestation of divine beauty" (CCC § 2519). The pure heart no longer reduces one's neighbor to a prey, a rival or an instrument: it sees him as a person loved by God. Thus purity of heart, which seemed a virtue of refusal, opens onto the highest of virtues, charity: it does not diminish love, it makes it true.

The spirituality of the Divine Will, handed down to Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), gives purity of heart its final accent. In her writings, purity is not first the absence of stain: it is the transparency of a soul stripped of self, become capable of letting God's light pass through without holding it back.

Jesus teaches Luisa that purification of the heart passes through detachment: it is by stripping herself of all earthly attachment that the soul becomes "like a transparent crystal" that the divine light can traverse.

"If you do not come to a detachment that is both effective and affective, you will not be completely invested with my Light. If, on the contrary, you strip yourself of everything earthly, you will become like a transparent crystal that lets the fullness of light pass through it. In this way, my Divinity, which is Light, will penetrate you." — The Book of Heaven, volume 1^[32]

This page illumines the whole path: purity of heart is not a tensing against evil, but a stripping that makes the soul transparent. The more the heart detaches itself from its idols, the more God's light traverses it — exactly what the image of the mirror said in Gregory of Nyssa.

Elsewhere, Jesus gives the law that sums up the whole fight for purity of intention: it is not the greatness of deeds that counts, but the intention that inhabits them, for "intention purifies action."

"Human actions, even those called holy, are filled with darkness if they are not done with the precise intention of pleasing Me. Yet when they are done with rectitude and with the intention of pleasing Me, they reach Me full of light. For intention purifies action." — The Book of Heaven, volume 7, 21 July 1906^[33]

Growing in purity of heart, in this perspective, is not only avoiding stain: it is restoring to one's soul the transparency of crystal, so that God may traverse it with his light and be reflected in it as in a spotless mirror.

One does not grow in a virtue by fixing it as an abstract ideal, but by contemplating those who lived it. Now purity of heart has sovereign masters.

The first model is Christ himself, the sinless heart, "meek and humble of heart" (Mt 11:29), whose limpid gaze saw into the depths of men. Next comes Mary, the "all-pure," whose "spotless" heart was wholly turned toward God, and who for this "believed" first (Lk 1:45). Saint Francis of Assisi describes pure hearts as those who, detached from all, "never cease to adore and to see the Lord God living and true"^[34].

The Church also proposes the Desert Fathers, who made purity of heart the goal of their lives; Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who referred everything to love through purity of intention in small things; Saint Faustina, who made of it "an inexhaustible treasure" (Diary § 66). Their example says one thing: purity of heart is not a sad constraint, but a greatness — that of a heart so simple and so unified that it sees God everywhere. Looking at them is remembering that this virtue, far from shrinking man, raises him to vision.

Purity of heart does not grow by grand resolutions, but by a small and repeated fidelity. The means studied can be summed up in a simple program, graded from the most fundamental to the most daily.

Reading the table: none of these exercises is spectacular; it is their faithful repetition that transforms. One begins with one or two, holds to them, then adds more.

The essential thing is not to aim at purity of heart in general, but to posit, today, the concrete act that presents itself: this gaze to turn away, this intention to straighten, this idol to hand over to God, this forgiveness to give. For purification of the heart is the work of a lifetime; and a lifetime is made only of instants. To him who holds on, day after day, is promised the highest of beatitudes: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

• How to Grow in Chastity — the integration of sexuality into the person (CCC 2337), a major dimension of purity of heart to which this article refers without duplicating it.
• How to Grow in the Fight against Lust — the negative way, the direct fight against the vice opposed to purity of the body.
• How to Grow in Temperance — the cardinal virtue that moderates pleasures according to reason and prepares the limpidity of the heart.
• How to Grow in Detachment — the stripping that makes the heart simple and transparent to God's light.
• How to Grow in Spiritual Vigilance and How to Grow in Interior Silence — guarding the heart and the fight against thoughts.
• How to Grow in Prayer — the prayer that purifies the gaze and receives God's passive purification.
• How to Grow in Regular Confession and How to Grow in Frequent Communion — the sacramental sources of purity.
• How to Grow in Charity — the love in which purity of heart finds its completion, in Cassian's words.
• The Beatitudes and The Desert Fathers — the sixth beatitude in Christ's discourse, and the monastic tradition that made purity of heart its goal.