Create a Clean Heart in me, O God Ps. 51

 Design by Sr. Mary Grace Thul, OP

The Rwanda survivor Immaculée Ilibagiza writes in her book, Left to Tell:

I came to learn that God never shows us something we aren’t ready to understand. Instead, He lets us see what we need to see, when we need to see it. He’ll wait until our eyes and hearts are open to Him, and then when we’re ready, He will plant our feet on the path that’s best for us…but it’s up to us to do the walking.

She learned this as she hid for three months in a tiny bathroom crowded with 7 other women. While Tutsi all over Rwandan were brutally slaughtered, including her father, mother and two brothers, Immaculée learned how easy it was to become angry. As her anger grew to monstrous proportions, she realized that before she could effectively pray to God for light and grace, she needed to forgive those who had cruelly hurt her and all she loved. For weeks she struggled to forgive in her heart while death and destruction triumphed all around her. She realized she could not forgive on her own…and so turned to God for help. Her memoir journals her struggle and her victory.

All the desert Abbas and Ammas tell us that the journal toward seeking God is a journey toward purifying your heart. If you harbor resentment or hatred, your heart will never achieve that goal. We all experience injustice to varying degrees, and our anger may be well founded. It can be against people we barely know, or it can be against a sibling or a parent. But until we let it go, anger will keep us from obtaining purity of heart. Anger and lack of forgiveness doesn’t hurt the offender…it hurts us. It acts like a barricade, holding in our hearts all resentment and frustrations so that God's graces find no room. Forgiveness is foreign to our nature; we cannot accomplish it without his help.

Life is sometimes hard, and the way unclear. When I pray for guidance and still cannot see, it may be that my heart and eyes are closed by resentment. Such barricades cannot be opened except through that divine act whereby I leave the injury behind me and walk on toward the Face of God.