Jesus told us that it is the ‘pure of heart’ who are blessed and will SEE God.

It’s getting harder to imagine there could possibly be very many people now “seeing God,” in today’s depraved culture bombarding us with inappropriate images appealing to our sensuality daily!

Our innate natural inclinations in the ‘sex’ department haven’t, of course, gone away as we moved into the 21st century, but the laws, decorum and social mores protecting us from having those desires excited perpetually in inappropriate ways, at inappropriate times, HAVE gone away.

Our culture continues to move to normalize sex as something that is a matter of ‘private rights,’ not ‘public good,’…. a “pleasurable personal choice” that no one, nor society should interfere with in any way.

In fact, “liberalized sex” is being encouraged in whatever form individuals so choose, outside of any consideration for the essential PURPOSE for which sex exists, or the need for boundaries to ensure stable families and well-ordered societies based on facts, principles and values that are logical.

Things that incline toward ensuring the common good, not the fulfilment of personal desires for something as base as a “pleasure-over-pain” guide for life, an approach that is God-less and completely denies the spiritual potential for holiness within us and a course of thinking and acting that would bring that about.

Our culture has been encouraging promiscuity in visual entertainments for decades, but with technology and the dawning of a lawless society following the declaration of a c-19 pandemic, that has now morphed into a flood of barely-clad “sirs and sirens” everywhere you look, in elementary-school-age books teaching 7 yr old kids how to  masturbate and find a ‘secret’ safe place at home to do that, for example…it’s everywhere in both the real and virtual worlds, and needs to be targeted with spiritual weapons in the spiritual warfare within which we are engaged.

Being saturated in such a culture brings a kind of ‘psychic numbing’ over time, with the gradual but unmistakable downward trend with the ‘acceptable’ standards regarding sex and the presentation of the body publicly: we have become a culture that “sees bodies but not souls”!

Our continued participation in such a culture means we need to be on the lookout mentally, always able to detect and counter the pernicious effects of this deceptive smog clogging our minds and preventing us from fully surrendering our hearts to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, from being fully united to God, pure in heart, and ABLE to see Him.

I’ve attached two screen captures from Archbishop Sheen’s chapter on lust in his book “Victory over vice” which I’ve provided a link to [It’s in the public domain and free, the link is to a website that has the book presented in a nice layout so you can read it online (second link)].

EYE OPENING insights, especially about Mary at the foot of the cross and what that all means.

The guy was a theological genius and true Shephard after the heart of Jesus… something that is now in seriously short supply.

https://zoboko.com/text/3d5w4eg0/victory-over-vice/1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywhQy-wsl7g&t=17s&ab_channel=TrulyCatholic