Reverence begins with prayer....

Benedict tells us that prayer should be brief, offered with few words, arising from a heart that is pure rather than from lips that are merely busy. God is not persuaded by the length of our prayers but by the openness of our hearts.

Sr. Joan Chittister reminds us that the purpose of prayer is not to establish a routine but to establish a relationship—an enduring relationship with the God who is already with us. Prayer is not something we do at appointed hours alone; prayer is the slow shaping of a life until every thought, every word, every action becomes an expression of God's presence within us.

The ancient monks called this purity of heart. John Cassian described it as the one great purpose toward which every spiritual discipline points. It is not moral perfection. It is singleness of heart—the gradual surrender of every competing desire until there is only one great longing left: to seek God in all things.

Centuries later, Thomas Merton wrote that the pure of heart are those who no longer seek themselves, but seek only the will of God. Meister Eckhart taught that we must become empty enough for God to be God within us. Thomas Keating reminded us that the spiritual journey is less about acquiring holiness than about letting go of the false self that obscures it. And Richard Rohr often observes that we do not think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking.

Perhaps that is why the word true is so profound. Truth is not merely the correctness of our opinions. It is the alignment of our lives with the life of God. We speak of true north because it does not wander. We speak of true notes because they are in harmony. Likewise, a true heart is one brought into harmony with the heart of God.

Such truth can be elusive. We are easily deceived by ambition, comfort, fear, certainty, and self-interest. The Desert Fathers warned that the greatest obstacle to God is not wickedness but illusion—the mistaken belief that our own desires are God's desires. Prayer slowly strips away those illusions. It teaches us to listen with "the ear of the heart" until God's hopes become our hopes, God's compassion becomes our compassion, and God's truth becomes the measure of our lives.

Then prayer has accomplished its work. We have become, little by little, what we have prayed. Our words grow fewer because our lives speak more clearly. We become disciples whose witness is not found primarily in eloquent speech but in quiet integrity. We become, in Benedict's vision, people whose hearts are pure, whose minds are centered in the Truth that is Truth, whose strength rests in the Power that is Power, and whose lives are transformed by the Love that is Love.

For in the end, purity of heart is simply this: to will one thing—to belong wholly to God, and in belonging to Him, to belong more completely to His world.