Pure, Purity, Impure, Impurity

See also: Desire (Good and Bad), Envy, Concupiscence, Chastity, celibacy, Sexuality, Sensuality, Lust.

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File:Brooklyn Museum - The Adulterous Woman Alone with Jesus (La Adulterous woman seule avec Jesus) - James Tissot.jpg

The Adulterous woman alone with Jesus - James Tissot

The notions of purity and impurity can refer either to the ritual practices of the Jews (including those of Purification), or to the total preservation of chastity, or to the holy conjugal relationships between spouses, without excess or disorders, oriented towards the total gift of oneself, one to the other, in God, or again to the righteousness of intention of a moral act.

In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"     

• Purity of Heart and gaze of Mary.
• (Jesus): The value of purity is such that Satan was first concerned with leading me into impurity. He knows well that a fault of sensuality dismantles the Soul and makes it an easy prey to other sins. Satan put all his effort into this crucial point to overcome me.
• You shall not commit impurities: "Oh! say, especially you men. Which of you has never tasted this bread of ashes and filth that is sensual satisfaction? Is there only lust that drives you for an hour into the arms of a courtesan? Is not the profanation of marriage with the wife also lust?"
• As his desperate mother begs him, Jesus speaks to the young leprous libertine who had an adulterous relationship with the young woman of a client of his father. Jesus is sad: "And when you sinned, did you not think of your mother? You were mad enough not to remember you had a mother on earth and that there was a God in heaven. And if leprosy had not appeared, you would never have remembered that you offended God and your Neighbor? What have you done with your Soul... your youth?" - "I was tempted..." - "Are you a child to ignore that this fruit is cursed? You would deserve to die without my pity." (He heals him of his leprosy anyway).
  "I performed the miracle because of that poor mother. But lust disgusts me so much that I am revolted. You shouted in fear and disgust of leprosy. For Me, my Soul shouted in disgust of lust. All miseries surround me, and for all I am the Savior. But I prefer to touch a dead, a just man already decomposed in his flesh who was honest and who is already at Peace with his spirit, rather than approach a lustful man. I am the Savior, but I am the Innocent. (...) I understand you would want something else from Me. But I am incapable. The ruin of a youth barely formed and destroyed by passion disturbed me more than if I had touched Death. Let us go to the sick. Unable, because of the nausea that strangulates me, to be the Word, I will be the Salvation of those who hope in Me. Peace be with you."
  In fact Jesus is very pale, as if suffering. He only regains his smile when he leans over sick children and invalids lying on their stretchers. Then, he becomes Himself again(...)
• I insist on the value of purity. Chastity is always a source of clarity for thought. Virginity sharpens and then maintains the sensitivity of the intellect and affections to a degree of perfection that only the virgin experiences.
• Blessed are the pure Hearts, for they will see God.
• Regarding becoming a Co-redeemer, a glory to which even the Angels cannot ascend (): Meanwhile, prepare for this destiny with purity of Heart and intention. The purer you are, the more you will understand. For impurity, whatever it is, is always a smoke that obscures and weighs down the sight and intellect.
• Purity of gaze: Be pure. Begin to be so in your body, then pass to the spirit. Begin with the five senses to pass to the seven passions.
  Begin with the eye: the sense of sight is king, it opens the way to the most biting and complex hunger. The eye sees the flesh of the Woman and desires the flesh. The eye sees the opulence of the rich and desires the gold. The eye sees the power of those who govern and desires power.
  Have a peaceful, honest, moderate, pure eye, and you will have peaceful, honest, moderate and pure desires. The purer your eye, the purer your Heart. Watch carefully over your eye, eager to discover the tempting apples. Be chaste in your looks if you want to be chaste in your body. If you have chastity of the flesh, you will have chastity of the riches and power. You will have all chastities and be the friends of God. Do not fear being mocked if you are chaste. Fear only being the Enemies of God.
• Be humble, gentle, patient. This is how one conquers the world, not by Violence and strength. Be strong and violent Against your vices, Uproot them, even if you have to tear your Heart. I told you a few days ago to watch over your looks. But you do not know how to do it. I tell you: it would be better to become Confessors by tearing out eyes full of covetousness than to become lustful.         
• John is a pure being. Among all my Disciples, he is “the Pure one”. His Soul is a flower in a body of an angel. He uses, to call Me, the words of his first master and asks Me to give him Peace. But Peace, he possesses within himself through the purity of his life, and I loved him for that purity. It is to him I entrusted my teachings, my secrets, and even the person who was dearest to me. (Mary)
  He was my first disciple, he loved me from the first moment he saw me. His Soul was united with mine from the day he saw me pass along the Jordan and saw John the Baptist point me out. Even if he had not met me later upon my return from the desert, he would have sought me until he found me. Indeed, he who is pure is humble and eager to be instructed in the science of God and goes, like water towards the sea, to those in whom he sees masters of the Doctrine of heaven.
• Pure and impure: Jesus comes to save the baby (Faustina (Fausta)) of the Roman Valéria. "But here a small group of Israelites feels the need to intervene: "How dare you approach foreigners? They are corrupt, impure and whoever approaches them becomes like them." Jesus reproves their own hypocrisy, those who do business with these same Romans, and explains in detail what is pure or impure.
• Impure foods among the Jews: "But then why were they classified by us as impure?" asks Philip.
  "(...) To this classification, there is a supernatural reason and a natural reason. The first is to teach the chosen people how to live with present in their spirit their election and the dignity of man, even in a common action such as eating.
  The savage feeds on everything. It suffices to fill his belly. The pagan, even if not savage, eats everything as well, without thinking that overeating fosters vices and tendencies that degrade man. Pagans even seek to reach the frenzy of pleasure which for them is almost a Religion (...)
  The son of the people of God must know how to master himself and by obedience and prudence perfect himself thinking of his origin and his end: God and Heaven. The natural reason also requires not to excite the blood by foods that bring about ignoble passional impulses of man.
  Carnal love itself is not forbidden to him, but he must always temper it by the freshness of the Soul which tends toward Heaven. Therefore, it must be love and not sensuality that unites the man to his companion in whom he sees his likeness and not a female. But poor beasts are not guilty for being pigs nor for the effects that pork flesh can long-term produce in the blood."
• (Following Pharisees’ reproaches): The pure and the impure. It is not the foods, but what comes out of the Heart: "What contaminates man is what is his own, only his own, engendered and born of his self. That is to say, what he has in the Heart, and which rises from the Heart to the lips and head and corrupts the mind and the word and contaminates the whole man. It is from the Heart that come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, and blasphemies.
  It is from the Heart that come greed, vicious inclinations, prides, envies, angers, exaggerated appetites, culpable idleness.
  It is from the Heart that comes incitement to all Actions. And if the Heart is evil, they will be evil like the Heart. All Actions: from idolatries to slanders without sincerity... All these evil things which go from the inside out contaminate man, but not eating without washing hands."
• I told you how man purifies himself by a humble and sincere repentance. There is no sin that God does not forgive if the sinner is truly repentant. Have faith in Divine Goodness. If you could come to understand what this Goodness is, even if you had all the sins of the world on you, you would not flee far from God but rather run to his feet because only the Most Good can forgive what man does not forgive.
• To priests: You have the living example of what a breast must be that welcomes the Word that becomes Flesh. This example is that of the Woman without original fault and without individual fault who bore me. Observe how pure the summit of Hermon is still wrapped in the veil of winter snow.

In other works of Maria Valtorta

Notebooks

• Commentary on "Acts 10:15": The Holy Spirit purifies non-believers who are men of good will: "What God has made pure, even if it retains the appearance of impurity, is a Soul that seeks God with pure intentions. (...) Like the tide that covers this shore and uncovers the opposite shore which, too sandy, does not allow the flow to rise to purify and irrigate it, the Holy Spirit, whose coming you too many prevent because of your way of life, spreads its lights on others who deserve more than you to receive them. It purifies them for God, since He is the Purifier, the preparer of the work of God and the one who perfects it."

In fundamental Christian texts

In the Bible

• Food and external practices related to ritual purity.--
• "Wash me thoroughly from my fault and cleanse me from my sin".
• "Nothing external to the man entering him can defile him, but what comes out of man is what defiles the man." (cf. verses 1-23 for context)
• "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for fornicators and adulterers God will judge".
• "Flee from fornication. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?"

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church  

Commentary on the 6th Commandment: "You shall carefully observe purity in your acts" 2331 - 2400

• CCC 2331: "Man and Woman He created them".
• CCC 2337: The vocation to chastity.
• CCC 2360: The love of the spouses.
• CCC 2380: The offenses against the dignity of marriage.

Commentaries on the 9th Commandment: "In thoughts and desires keep fully pure" 2514 - 2533

• CCC 2517: Purity of Heart.
• The combat for purity: The fight for purity:
• CCC 2520: Baptism confers on him who receives it the grace of purification from all sins. But the baptized must continue to Struggle Against the concupiscence of the flesh and disordered desires. With the grace of God, he achieves this:
• – through virtue and the gift of chastity', because chastity allows loving with a right and undivided Heart.
• – through purity of intention which consists in aiming at the true end of man: with a simple eye, the baptized seeks to find and accomplish in all things the will of God (cf. Rm 12:2; Col 1:10).
• – through purity of gaze, both external and internal; through discipline of feelings and imagination; through refusal of any complacency in impure thoughts inclining to turn away from the path of divine commandments: "The sight awakens passion in the senseless" (Wis 15:5).
• – through prayer: "I thought continence depended on my own strength, ... strength I did not know I had. And I was foolish enough not to know that no one can be continent unless you give it to him. And certainly, you would have given it if, from my inner groan, I had knocked at your ears and if with solid faith, I had cast upon you my anxiety" (Saint Augustine, confessions 6, 11, 20).