Why join the Movement of Pure Hearts?

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Why join the Movement of Pure Hearts?

Author: Testimony,
"Love One Another!" 32/2015

Reading the testimonies of people and their struggle for pure hearts, we realised that to be able to be “fully together”, we had to be pure as well.

Why join the Movement of Pure Hearts?

We were both seventeen years old. I remember the time before the holidays: beautiful weather, the awareness of the free time to come and our decision that we wanted to live differently. We had just decided to join the Movement of Pure Hearts (MPH). We found out about it from the magazine “Love One Another!”which my mum subscribed to. Reading the testimonies of people and their struggle for pure hearts, we realised that to be able to be “fullytogether”, we had to be pure as well. What does it mean to be fullytogether when you are seventeen? The idea is to use the feeling that is between us to do good and to become better people. When I was beginning to go out with Darek, I did not see it this way. I just wanted to be with him, to hold his hand and enjoy the fact that “I have a boyfriend”. Now – at the age of twenty-eight, with four years of married life and a tiny person between us – I look at that time quite differently. I am glad that it was not wasted and, although we made mistakes, our starting a family proves that with Jesus we gained something most beautiful.

But back to the beginning. Having made the decision, we wrote a letter to the editors with a brief explanation of why we wanted to join the Movement of Pure Hearts. The conditions that must be met have not changed to this day: sincere confession, a firm resolve to improve, praying the Prayer of Entrustment (it can be found on the last pages of “Love One Another!”) and informing the editorial team that we wanted to become members of the MPH. We had met the requirements, so now God had to make us pure… that was our thinking then. Only the retreat in Rzeszów, meeting with the editor priest and Dr Jacek Pulikowski, and long, private conversations with them altered our approach to the Movement. It turned out that life in chastity is full of effort. However, it gives satisfaction which cannot be obtained by simply “going with the flow”. Jacek Pulikowski taught us: “don’t even approach the minefield”, meaning avoid occasions for sin; no staying together in an empty house in the evening, camping out together where “accidentally” there is no other place to sleep and we have to spend the night together. He told us that there would be days when one of us would feel that “today may be dangerous”, and it would be best not to meet. The most important thing was to build a relationship with Christ, true friendly ties that cannot be built on passions, hypocrisy and selfishness. That is why the struggle for purity is so important. Daily prayer, frequent reception of Holy Communion, participation in the Eucharist and an immediate confession after each fall are the foundations on which we should build our relationship. Inviting Christ in is the guarantee that everything will succeed!!! Even if we are not united in marriage forever, we will part in peace, not wounded, but with an awareness of growth and well-used time.

After those retreats, our struggle began in earnest. As I wrote, the situations varied, but entrusting ourselves to Christ gave us the strength not to give up. In my opinion, the important thing is to never give up, even if we are not doing so well, if we confess every week. We must believe that our strength is Christ and He gives grace, watching our struggle, effort and desire. We are not able to save ourselves!

Thanks to participating in the MPH retreat, we learned about the Ignatian retreat and decided to go there to be alone with God. It was a special time. Moreover, eleven years later, we still cannot imagine a year without this eight-day retreat. Our special place on earth is the chapel in the House of the JesuitFathers on Górka in Zakopane, where we built our friendship with Jesus, and where Darek later proposed to me. From that day on, 17 October 2008, everything changed. In that chapel, we received the strength that we had earlier been lacking. Thanks to this, our year of engagement was the most beautiful time in our relationship (of course, not counting the years of marriage, because they are even better).

On the day of our wedding, during the Holy Communion, we read a prayer that we had prepared on our own for that day. In it we submitted to Christ our struggle, effort and toil, and also the result: purity as a gift on that special day. We also received from Him the strength to continue on a path that was much more beautiful, but also more difficult than the previous one.

The most important thing is to build a relationship with Christ, true friendly ties that cannot be built on passions, hypocrisy and selfishness

We believe that it is worthwhile joining the Movement of Pure Hearts, because:

you build a true, sincere friendship with Jesus, showing him that you are giving up what you really care about because of Him, and that you believe Him, not yourselves;
(girl) you are sure that the boy cares about you, not your body;
(boy) you’ve got control over yourself, you do not have to be like a dog begging for a bone, you are to be a strong guy!
if you control yourself, you are master of yourself, and you can give yourself to another; if you are not master of yourself, you act selfishly;
if you are able to give up sexual pleasures before the wedding, it will be easy to be faithful to each other when you are married;
you prepare yourselves to use natural methods of family planning;
you do not look at another person through the prism of desire;
you have more time to do good deeds (for example, help in a nursing home, in a support group for prisoners, helping underprivileged children do their homework);
you give up momentary happiness for the greater, fuller good and deep joy!

Magda & Darek

Source: https://loamagazine.org/archive/2015/2015-32/why-join-the-movement-of-pure-hearts

The article was published with the permission from "Love One Another!" in September 2020.