But time is not the subject of this post: purity is.
As you know, I'm taking 10 months to dedicate myself to Christ through Mary, using her 10 Virtues as a guide. For the first month I chose purity. You can't exactly do something huge like this and not talk about it on your blog (which, by the way, was opened for the purpose of this journey). So, I've been wondering about purity all month. What does purity actually mean? How far does it extend? How do you improve in the areas of this virtue?
These questions might seem like a no-brainer, but are they really? I asked myself the other day, "Amy. How would you describe purity?" and I had one of those "how do you describe the word 'the'?" moments. I thought about it, and then broke it down. Pure. Describe pure.
Clean?
Innocent?
Free of blemish?
Would purity not be the state of being pure? So, if one has a virtue of purity they would be clean, right? Clean and innocent and free of blemish.
I was getting gum off of my brother's carpet today. We're currently cleaning all the carpets in the house, and I was assigned the unfortunate job of getting all that gum my two youngest siblings have left neglected on the floor for, I don't know, about five years. Okay, maybe not that long. But long enough.
It was quite a rough job. Not so much gross as it was annoying. It was on carpet, for crying out loud. You have to get scissors and mess with the carpet and then your fingers hurt and you're on the floor forever and it just goes on and on.
So, there I was on the floor with my scissors and listening to music trying to decide what I wanted to blog about. I knew I wanted something on purity, but I wasn't having any epiphanies. I decided to pray a Rosary. I know. I was so proud of myself, too. It, naturally, came to me in the middle of the third decade. It was pretty much like this:
"Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with Thee,
Blessed art thou among--I'm purifying my carpet."
I paused a moment. Finished the Hail Mary. Meditated on that quite random thought-intrusion. Thought it was a pretty neat idea, and finished the Rosary.
Now. You know the purity. You know the carpet. Can you see what I'm doing here?
It's time for a Metaphor Meeting!
So. I was cleaning the carpet. I was getting the ugly off of it. When I got one gum spot off, you could barely tell it had been there, except for the imprint which would fade with the scuffling of feet. Eventually, the carpet looked better. Not great, but better. I'd at least gotten the obviously gross stuff up.
For the purpose of this metaphor, the carpet is going to be multiple things. It will represent our soul, our mouth, our body, and our mind. There are some things that obviously make these things just disgusting. Selfishness corrupts the soul. Swearing corrodes the mouth. Immodest clothes disfigure the body. Lust destroys the mind. You can go further into this; these are just some examples.
My mom then came in with the carpet cleaner. She got off all the obvious stains and more. When she dumped out the dirty water it was pitch black. I'm not even kidding. We all saw it. Pitch. Black. The carpet is definitely looking much, much better.
The carpet cleaner (God, salvation, purity. Insert interpretation here) gets the knitty-gritty stuff up. It purifies, so to speak, the carpet. Or our soul, mouth, body, mind, etc.
God purifies us. He uses some kind of metaphorical scissors to help get the disgusting stuff off--if we'll let Him of course, because some of those gum stains were pains in the neck! Then He comes along with His heavenly carpet cleaner and makes us clean. Makes us clean.
He makes us clean. Innocent. He frees us of blemish. He makes us pure. Us Catholics can say this carpet cleaner is like Confession. And like all human beings, we sin. The carpet gets dirty. God must get His awesome carpet cleaner and clean us again.
But you know that wonderful feeling you have fresh out of Confession? The feeling of having no sins beating down on your shoulders. That, I think, must be when you are at the peak of purity. Could I be so bold as to say that in the moments after we leave the Confessional we are as like Christ as we are humanly able to be?
Then we decide what to do after that. We hold the packs of gum and the soda in one hand. We're going to get knocked over and that soda will spill. We're going to want that minty fresh (or fruity, if you like the fruity kind) taste in our mouths so bad. But in the other hand, we hold a powerful weapon: a carpet cleaner free-cleaning coupon. Reusable as many times as necessary, of course.
This was a long post. Sorry about that. I'm not even sure I got the main point across. It all made so much sense in my head; it makes sense to me now, but my brain and your brains are very, very different.
So, purity. Think about it.
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