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A naked heart, is a heart completely abandoned to divine mercy
and the love of God.
Jeanne de Chantal
In correspondence in May of 1616 between St Francis de Sales
and Jeanne de Chantal, Francis wrote encouraging her to continue
the exercise of her naked abandonment to God with the prayer:
... Lord, pull, pull firmly from my heart all that
clothes it. Oh Lord, I do not withhold anything - seperate me
from myself....
Jeanne responded:
Certainly, I have a great desire and, it seems to
me, a firm resolution to remain in my nakedness, by the grace
of God - and I hope He will help me. I feel that my spirit is
utterly free and with an unknown, infinite, and profound
consolation to see itself in God's hands like this. It is
true that the rest of me remains astonished........ if I
wished to allow it my soul would seek to reclothe itself with
the feelings and expectations that our Lord has given it. But
I will not permit this, so that its motions are only
perceived as if they were far away..
True nakedness is unveiled personhood, and is totally
incompatible with lust that only breeds shame, addiction and
emptiness.
The opening of Pandora's box, the release of 'the knowing of
other than person' at the Fall necessitated
the veiling of personhood as protection against impersonal
objective knowing - the perception of death.
The original beauty of naked personhood was lost at the Fall,
but restored in the Redemption
With the veil in the temple being torn in two from top to
bottom at the death of Christ, humanity was provided with a way
back to the the pure perception and innocence of the Garden of
Eden.
C S Lewis in the 'The Great Divorce' writes:
I cannot remember now whether she was naked or
clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost
invisible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in
my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that
followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed,
then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the
clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through her
clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: The
spiritual body lives along each thread, and turns them into
living organs.
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A naked heart, and the appropriate interaction with others in
the nakedness of their heart is central to a vital Christianity.
Paradoxically one of the biggest threats to the nakedness of
heart we are facing at this time is through pornography
and sexual immorality. Again paradoxically it is through
embracing virtues which includemodesty and self-control that we
can be liberated. |
See also Nakedness and Primitive
Christianity.
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