Hypocrisy in Me? Purity of Intention –1&2
- Lourdes Pinto
- Jul 11, 2019
- 11 min read
Updated: Feb 27
Inspired by talk of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa
Hypocrisy in Me? Purity of Intention –1
Hypocrisy in Me? Purity of Intention –2
HYPOCRISY IN ME; Growing in Purity of Intention –1
Cenacle teaching 7/11/19
I. Father Cantalamessa’s 1st Lent Homily 2019 - “BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD”
Þ According to Jesus, the essential condition for “seeing” God is purity of heart: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8).
Þ Two areas concerning purity:
The righteousness of intentions
Purity in morals
Þ The opposite of purity of intentions is hypocrisy, and the opposite of purity in morals is the abuse of sexuality.
“When you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do. . . . When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. . . . And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites. “(Mt 6:1-18)
Þ It is surprising that the sin of hypocrisy—the sin most denounced by Jesus in the Gospels—enters so little into our ordinary formulations of examinations of conscience. Not having found in any of them the question, “Have I been a hypocrite?” I had to add it in there myself, and rarely have I been able to go past it to the next question without being convicted. The greatest act of hypocrisy would be to hide one’s own hypocrisy—hiding it from ourselves and others since it is impossible to hide it from God. Hypocrisy is, in large part, overcome the moment it is recognized.
Þ A person, wrote Blaise Pascal, has two lives: One is his true life, and the other is the imaginary one he lives in his own mind and the minds of other people. We work hard to embellish and conserve our imaginary being, and we neglect our true being. If we have some virtue or merit, we are careful to make it known somehow so as to attach it to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate a virtue from our true life and join it to the imaginary one: we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave, even to the point of giving up our life as long as people would talk about it.
This is who he has become, but it is not who he is. I see him as who he is and suffer who he has become. 1/14/18
Þ Origin and the meaning of the word “hypocrisy.”
It comes from the language of the theater.
The exterior words and attitudes do not correspond to the inner reality of the heart. What appears on one’s face is not what is in one’s heart.
The ancients gave it the meaning that it really has: pretense. What was negative in stage fiction was transferred to the word “hypocrisy.”
Þ The origin of the word puts us on track to discover the nature of hypocrisy. It turns life into a stage where we perform for the public; it means putting on a mask and ceasing to be a person in order to become a character. A fictive character is nothing but a corruption of an authentic person. A person has a face; a character wears a mask. A person is completely bare; a character is completely wrapped in clothes. A person loves authenticity and reality; a character lives a life of fiction and artifice. A person follows his or her own convictions; a character follows a script. A person is humble and gentle; a character is cumbersome and unwieldly.
Ex. –a priest who had envy because all the brothers go to for counsel to his friend. …. TRANSPARENCY
Þ Hypocrisy sets traps for pious and religious people in particular. Why?
Wherever spiritual values, piety, and virtues are most highly esteemed, the strongest temptation is to pretend to have them so as not to seem to be without them.
“fake saint” – Simple Path p. 199
Pope Francis warns us about the lie of being “fake saints”:
God “generously forgives”…, but what he doesn’t forgive is “hypocrisy and fake saints,”… God prefers “sanctified sinners”—people who, despite their past sins, learn how to do a greater good. “Fake saints” are people who are more concerned with appearing saintly than doing good. …. We are all clever and always find a path that is not right, to seem more virtuous than we are: it is the path of hypocrisy. They pretend to convert, but their heart is a lie: they are liars! It is a lie … Their heart does not belong to the Lord; their heart belongs to the father of all lies, Satan. And this is fake holiness. Jesus preferred sinners a thousand times to these. Why? Because sinners told the truth about themselves. “Get away from me, Lord, I am a sinner!” Peter once said.
Another danger comes from the multitude of rituals that pious people are supposed to perform and the rules they are supposed to observe. If these rituals are not accompanied by a continuous effort to establish them within one’s soul out of love for God and neighbor, they become empty shells.
Þ When hypocrisy becomes chronic, it creates, both in marriage in and in consecrated life, a “double life”: one that is public and well known while the other is hidden—often one during the day and another at night. It is the most dangerous spiritual state for a soul, and it becomes extremely difficult to exit from it unless something from outside intervenes and shatters the wall behind which a person is sealed off. It is the condition that Jesus describes with the image of whitewashed tombs:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (Mt 23:27-28)
Þ Ask: why hypocrisy is such an abomination to God?
Hypocrisy is a lie. It obscures the truth. In addition, hypocrisy deposes God and puts him in second place while putting creatures—the public—in the first place. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7): to cultivate outward appearance more than the heart automatically means giving more importance to human beings than to God.
Simple Path Ch. 2 – Humility – 2-F p.64
“we must be willing to pull out the entire root system of our sins, fears, and disordered tendencies to come to know who we are and live to please God. This is what the Path is meant to do. “(Simple Path p.70)
21. Allow Your Disorders to Come to the Light — p.71
Trust, and with patient endurance, allow all your disorders to come to the Light. It is only in this way that you can be made pure in the furnace of God’s love. (8/6/13)
Hypocrisy, then, is essentially a lack of faith. “How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (Jn 5:44).
Simple Path 4-B-1 The First Nail – Purification of our desires
To expose our lies and begin to trust: “Only when we have discovered and rejected those lies and accepted the truth about ourselves can we trust ourselves and the Lord who wants us to come home.” P.189
II. From the teaching, The Eucharist, Part I, 6/22/2017:
Þ CCC -1366: [Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross,…
Þ Wherever our cross is, there is our altar of sacrifice. There is where our offering during the consecration of the Mass becomes real, our sacrifice as real flesh, the real pain of our suffering WITH Christ’s.
To come to the altar of sacrifice in the Mass without having lived my daily sacrifice in the altar of my cross, whether at home or work, is a sterile sacrifice to the Father. The words of the Mass —through Him, with Him, and in Him— must be lived daily in the ordinary, tediousness & difficulties of my life, in the sacrament of the moment. It is only in this way that my sacrifice is truly pleasing to God and made perfect in Jesus’ sacrifice of perfect love.
Your lives will be a continuous prayer offering as you offer up your daily sacrifices and duties on the altar of your homes. Simple Path #98
Hypocrisy:
Do I live certain duplicity of life; one way with my family or those I live with and another way at work or outside in the world -- When in my home, I continue with a hardness of heart, and outside the home, I put on a different image (mask)?
(Continue from Fr Cantalamessa’s reflection:
Hypocrisy is also a lack of charity toward one’s neighbor because it tends to reduce others to being admirers. It does not recognize the dignity that is properly theirs because it sees others only in connection to one’s own image. What is important is the size of the audience
c) A Humble Person Lives to Please God Above All. Simple Path p.70. “the deep unconscious motive for being nice is fear…” p.71
Lourdes Pinto
Hypocrisy in Me? Purity of Intention —Part II
Cenacle teaching 7/18/19
Þ Today we shall focus on how to correct our hypocrisy
Þ Our victory over hypocrisy will never be a victory at the outset.
Unless we have reached a very high level of perfection, we cannot instinctively avoid feeling the desire to appear in a good light, to make a good impression, and to please others.
Our weapon is the correction of our intentions. Righteous intention is attained through constant, daily correction of our intentions.
The intention of the will, not an inner feeling, is what makes the difference in God’s eyes.
Þ Living the Simple Path brings us to an ATTENTIVENESS OF OUR HEARTS so that we can correct the intention of our hearts.
Notice that all our disordered tendencies flow from impure hearts.
Þ Ex: a MOC shared that her tendency is to enter resentment and revenge and act from those emotions when her expectations of people are not met.
Correcting her intentions means she:
1st - must be attentive to her heart and docile to SEE this impurity;
2nd – enter SILENCE to deny herself - “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23
–CRUCIFY HER DESIRES -- those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Gal.5:24)
63. The Purification of Your Desires —Diary of a MOC. p.187
The purification of your desires is the first stage of purification in My Sacred Heart. You begin to move only according to My desires and not yours. You no longer do what you want to do, nor go where you want to go; but now, you go only where I take you. You choose to live each day according to what is most difficult, not what is easiest. This will require a greater discipline of your will, greater silence, and stillness of soul in Me.
What desires in me need to be crucified?
Can be disordered tendencies such as:
Desire to separate,
Desire to act on resentment,
Desire to “bite” -- If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. (Gal.5:15)
Desire for comfort,
Can be good desires that God has not willed to grant us: Desire for intimacy of heart
3rd – Third step: Repent before Christ – TRANSPARENT/ NAKED – Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Þ This is INTERIOR WORK that is REAL, and that authentic people do, and because of that it is very pleasing to God. It is what Fr Cantalmessa says in these words: “The intention of the will, not an inner feeling, is what makes the difference in God’s eyes.”
Þ If hypocrisy consists in making a show of the good that one does not really do, an effective remedy to counter this tendency is to conceal the good that one does, to favor the hidden gestures that will not be spoiled by any earthly gaze and will keep all their fragrance for God.
St. John of the Cross says, “God is more pleased by one work, however small, done secretly, without desire that it be known, than a thousand done with desire that men know of them.”
Jesus persistently recommends this practice: “Pray in secret, fast in secret, give alms in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you” (see Mt 6:4-18). Jesus also says, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:16). The issue is discerning when it is good for others to see and when it is better that they do not.
39. Martyrdom of the Heart —Diary of a MOC. p.139
The martyrdom of the heart is the martyrdom of suffering with Love and for Love. My daughter, if you could only understand the fruit of the martyrdom of suffering, you would desire nothing else on earth. The hidden life of suffering with Love and for Love is of far greater worth than great and small works tainted with human recognition. Believe in the hidden force contained in the martyrdom of the heart. This is the purest fragrance of love that has the power to conquer the enemies of God. (11/9/12)
Þ Our hidden sufferings of heart with Christ MUST be our most important work, our main work, because it IS our most fruitful work and that which is most pleasing to God because of its PURITY of INTENTION!
Þ Ask yourself:
Has my hidden life of suffering with Christ and for Christ become my joy?
Have I come to believe and treasure my interior hidden work? Do I prefer this hidden work above any other exterior work?
Jesus told us: “Live to please Me in all things.” But do I live to please myself, my good name, my reputation…?
Am I doing a visible work because it is God’s Will or to make myself important, look good, feel good, admired, wanted, affirmed….? (The work can also be God’s Will but, Is it tainted with my impure intentions.
Þ All glory be to God
Anything we do outside, including any ministry, is because our Lord has “sent us” as He did Moses.
Exodus 3:10-12 “So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”
We know the story – God‘s power and mercy brought the Israelite people out of Egypt, not Moses. Moses was simply OBEDIENT to the WILL OF GOD. He was God’s INSIGNIFICANT VESSEL so that ALL GLORY IS GOD’S! –
Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit because apart from me, you can do nothing. (John 15:5)
We are hypocrites when we desire to take the glory; when we think we did it; when we desire to make it about us. In this area, we need a constant daily correction.
I live authentically who I am when I live knowing that I am nothing and God is ALL. We might believe this in our minds, yet, as Fr Cantalamessa reminds us, we live the lie daily, most of the time subconscious of it, and this is hypocrisy.
Like Moses, God has chosen each of us and sent us to make all things new, especially a transformed priesthood. “Who am I?”, “Who are we?” The truth is that we are weak and nothing, like Moses, incapable of making anything new on our own, but only by living in His Will, obedient to all His desires, and not ours, He will make things and people new through us, with us, and in us and all the glory is His!
63. The Purification of your Desires p.187
You have come to recognize My voice and the promptings of My Divine Spirit. At times God requires immediate obedience; at others, your obedience is lived as you wait upon the Lord. The latter obedience requires greater abandonment and trust, and therefore, is more pleasing to Abba, Our Father. This is a complete dying to moving in your will. (1/16/14)
Þ The worst thing one can do after hearing or reading a description of hypocrisy is to use it to judge others and to denounce the hypocrisy around us. It is precisely these people to whom Jesus applies the name of hypocrites: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Mt 7:5).
Þ Who can say that they are completely immune from this form of hypocrisy? Of being not a bit like a whitewashed tomb, different on the inside from what appears on the outside? Our consolation is that, as soon as one says, “I have been a hypocrite,” one’s hypocrisy is overcome.
