Articles

This is the second time I’m writing to you about purity. Because this virtue is so especially important for holiness, and even more especially under attack in this age, I want to make sure you fully understand it.

When you were younger, you believed anything was possible. You loved fairy tales and superhero stories, all your games were full of imagination, with epic battles and blissful tea parties.

This was the most pure purity, because it’s true, anything is possible with God. And so you were pure and innocent, and God was delighted with your games.

When most people grow older, they lose this imagination. They lose this purity, and why?

Because as they grow up, the more they learn about this world, the more they fall in love with some aspect of it: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life.

And then they’re called “grown-ups”. But Jesus said you must be like a little child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven! No such grown-ups are allowed!

This does not mean you have to live in those childish fictional tales forever, no. But rather, as you grow up, you must live more in reality than those grown-ups.

Because your imagination was pointing you to a deeper reality, the one I told you about before. This one comes from Love, from God, and it is God, who said “I am the Truth”. And with God, anything is possible.

How do you live in this deeper reality?

First, with prayer. Prayer unites us with God and the Angels and Saints, who presently live fully in that deeper reality. They see it with their own eyes, clear as day, whereas we only see it with the eyes of faith.

Pray always, meaning, in all situations and places and times. Ask Jesus to open your eyes to see this spiritual world, and your mind and heart will live in it more and more each day.

During prayer, and even outside of prayer, use the imagination that God gave you to try to envision what’s truly happening all around you.

Think of the countless angels fighting demons all around you, protecting you. Try to envision in your mind the angels singing God’s praises with you at Mass.

When you’re under attack from temptations, call on St. Joseph to come to your aid, and imagine him walking up to you with a calm, peaceful, strong, and loving demeanor, and the demons fleeing from his presence in terror.

Think about the Blessed Virgin, sitting on the throne of Jesus with him, commanding angels—not in a domineering way, but in a loving and gentle way—to go here or there, to protect this child of God, now that one, now another one, from the evil one.

And imagine just how swiftly these angels fly to our aid, with those flaming wings they share with the Holy Spirit. How choirs of angels follow just behind them, singing in epic harmony, during their battles with the demons who try to tempt God’s children to sin, and how magnificently they must sing victoriously when those devils are cast down to the depths of Hell.

All of this is truly happening! All you’re doing is helping yourself to see it with the eyes of faith, until the day we can actually see it with our own eyes.

Besides prayer, also do your daily holy reading. The Bible is one of the best sources of holy reading, as it was co-written by the Holy Spirit, who is true God!

The Bible contains all sorts of epic tales, which are not merely imagination but are true! These epic tales show us the true reality, the deeper spiritual reality that we’re all living in right now. It shows it to us in a way that touches our imaginations and hearts, and opens our minds.

It’s very much like the story of Elisha, whose friend was panicking over the giant army that began to surround them. The prophet prayed that God open his eyes, and suddenly his friend saw countless more flaming angels surrounding them, far more than the human armies!

This is the true reality, and reading the Bible in a spirit of prayer will help open your eyes to this truth.

Reading other holy books will help too. These amazing events did not end with the age of the Apostles, they have continued in the Catholic Church for the past 2,000 years, and will continue until the end of this time.

Read the Glories of Mary on this site, and you will see many amazing stories of how the Blessed Virgin helped countless souls in this age. And you will see that many of them were saved by her help, in miraculous ways we could not even have dreamed of.

And these miracles are true! It’s only the “grown-ups” who refuse to believe in such miraculous events, because they are in love with this present world.

That’s the third thing you must do: do not let this world into your heart. The more you let it into your heart, the more cloudy it will make your spiritual eyes, until they go blind altogether!

Yes, this world is good and beautiful, because God made everything good and beautiful, since it comes from Him who is the source of all Goodness and Beauty. It came from him.

But, it does not all return to him as it should! Countless women gaze at their own beauty—the beauty that God gave them—and fall in love with it, and fall in love with themselves, as if they were the source of their own beauty. They begin to worship themselves, and lead many other men and women into the same error.

Such women most closely resemble Satan, who fell from Heaven because he was in love with his own beauty, which inflated him with pride when he gazed upon it so intently. And in fact, such women are one of the greatest causes of sin on the planet.

This is an extremely common trap today. But you know better than that. You will not fall for this trap. When you see that God has endowed you with such great beauty, of body, heart, mind, and soul, you will thank God for giving it to you, and find some way to use it to draw others to love God, the source of this beauty, as much as you yourselves do.

This is related to what many in the Church call “modesty”, by which they mean “hiding their beauty.” But for many women, modesty means the wrong thing. They see that they are given great beauty, and they see that it has a power to move hearts. But, considering men inferior to themselves and incapable of handling this beauty, these women hide it.

This is not quite the right definition of immodesty.

The rule for knowing how to dress, as well as how to carry yourself in general, is that, without any words, it must quickly and easily answer the questions “who are you and why are you here?” to anyone you might encounter.

This is why a King must dress in his Royal Robes in court during the day, and his pajamas at night in his bedroom, and why you must not dress in Royal Robes or pajamas when going out.

Now, this does not always mean hiding all of one’s beauty. If you are a young woman looking to find a husband, it’s a bit necessary that unmarried men of marriage age should know that you are on the market. But it must be done in such a way that nobody, not these men or anyone else, might have an opportunity—or more precisely a temptation—to let this beauty into their hearts.

Now the thing about beauty is that, the more fully we see it, the more it will sink into our hearts.

This principle is why you must avoid looking too much at anything beautiful, or too fully, or for too long, because it will quickly go past your eyes and penetrate your heart.

This principle is also why, the more we want to be pure, we must gaze upon the beauty of the virtues of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the Virgin Family, who never let one ounce of the world into their hearts.

I’ve written enough about purity for you for now. Remember: pray intimately and regularly, do your daily holy reading, and keep your eyes from gazing for too long or too intently at physical beauty (even your own), and focus it on the spiritual beauties of the Angels and Saints, of the epic story that is truly happening all around us, and especially on the Divine Mysteries relating to the Incarnation and Redemption of your soul.