In today’s Gospel Jesus invites me to seek purity of heart – “inside purity” – as opposed to “outside purity” to which the Pharisees were attached, and he points out the road to follow to achieve it.
This is a concept easier for me to accept than it was – and is – for the Jews, who believed things in themselves were unclean. But Jesus teaches me that source of sin is within my heart, the deepest part of my being.
So, when I experience a temptation and yield, it is because the desire was first in my heart; then in my desire and finally in my action.
Jesus makes himself my food in the Eucharist. By eating his body and drinking his blood my heart is made healthy, strong, alert, able to recognize the poison in the temptation to sin and to resist it.
Meanwhile, a clean heart is one disposed to do his will. One of the titles of Mary is “Immaculate Heart” because her heart was perpetually inclined to do God’s will.
I pray to her to show me how I can make my heart pure, to prepare for that day when, with God’s grace, my heart will be totally pure, that day when I shall see the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart face to face.