Guard Your Heart

I feel like this phrase is often tossed around: guard your heart, protect your heart... often it is referred to in discussions of purity or dating and courtship. But what does this really mean? How do we guard our hearts?

Let us look to the source of this command, Proverb 4: 23-27.

"With closest custody, guard your heart, for in it are the sources of life. Put away from you dishonest talk, deceitful speech put far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead and your glance be directly forward. Survey the path for your feet, and let all your ways be sure. Turn neither to the right nor to the left, keep your foot far from evil."

Our hearts, we are told, contain the sources of life. The sources of life? God, love, beauty. We speak of the heart as that part of us which loves, which is relational. Well then it is equated with our soul, that which is relational to God, and to our bodies, which are the expressions of our souls. So when we speak of guarding our hearts, it is not merely our emotions, but our souls which we are commanded to guard. And how do we do this? Through guarding our bodies.

Our bodies and souls are indissolubly united (though distinct--think Trinity). Our bodies are how we interact with and experience the world (and God! He often chooses to speak to us through our bodies when we are in prayer), thus they are the expression of our souls. This means then that when our body contacts something it is also contacting our soul; if we allow it into our bodies, then we are allowing it into our souls. Foods, Jesus tells us, pass through our bodies, therefore they cannot make us spiritually unclean. However whatever we see, whatever we hear, whatever we say-- all of these things are within our bodies, and therefore within our souls. Does that ring a bell? "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"?

It makes sense, then, that the command to guard our hearts is immediately followed with a command to speak with purity and truth, to keep our eyes and our glances only forward [towards purity, eternal life], to keep walking only forward towards Our Lord and Savior, and to keep ourselves far from evil. Watching, hearing, saying anything impure, deceitful or offensive to God soils our souls. Our white baptismal robes become crimson.

In our world today, it is so hard NOT to hear and see evil. But we must always do our best to avoid doing so, and when we do, to go to Christ in prayer and if necessary in confession, for cleansing. However there is never an excuse for speaking evil-- not ever. Here we are always at fault. We must always go to confession. For by its very nature, the act of speaking is an intentional act; it is not passive, it has always come about through our will. We may see and hear something without the consent of our will, but in speech this is impossible. It important to remember that whatever we say, whether in jest or seriousness, enters our souls and has an effect on it. If we only say things that are pure and good and give glory to God, so too will our souls. But if we allow anything unclean to pass our lips, if we say anything that is offensive to God, then so too are our souls.

Thought is also important to look at here: thoughts come into our minds without our control. However whether or not they stay there depends upon us aligning our will to them. And thoughts become words and action. Therefore Proverb 4 implies the necessity of guarding our minds as well, that we carefully weed them like gardens, never allowing that which is uninvited and impure to remain there. When we have aligned our will with impure thoughts, our soul too has become unclean, and we must take them to confession. If we are barraged by impure thoughts but constantly weed them out, then we must take refuge in prayer that Christ will purify our souls and our minds from them.