The Art of Purifying the Heart

Tomás Spidlík was born in Boskovice, now in the Czech Republic, in 1919. In 1938, he entered the Department of Philosophy at the University of Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. In the following year, he entered the Jesuits. In 1951, Spidlik began broadcasting programs from Vatican Radio to the countries behind the Iron Curtain calling for freedom. Among others, he met with Alexander Dubcek, the former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and Vàclav Havel, who became President of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic after the fall of the communist regime. His Sunday homilies in the Czech language have been translated and published in various languages including Polish, Romanian and Italian. 1955 marked the beginning of his university career as a professor of Patristic and Eastern Spiritual Theology at various universities in Rome as well as around the world. He was made Cardinal in 2003 and has become known as one of the greatest experts in the spirituality of Eastern Christianity today. As a prolific author, he has been equally acknowledged in the academic and international fields, and has been chosen Man of the Year, 1990 and the most admired person of the decade by the American Bibliographical Institute of Raleigh in North Carolina. He was also decorated with the medal of the Masaryk Order, one of the highest honors of the Czech State, by President Vaclav Havel.

We live in a technical society and we are used to thinking that everything that happens has an external cause, every movement an impetus from another force. The positivist psychologists have taught us that a child s soul is a tabula rasa, in which we will find only what other people will write there. Therefore society tries to indoctrinate us, in the good and bad senses of the word. Therefore, the human person is used to listening only to others, no longer pays attention to the inspirations of the heart, which come from the Spirit. It is a privilege of artists to have inspirations, but not exclusively. In the spiritual life everyone must be an artist and construct their own life under the guidance of the supreme Artist. As Saint Ignatius of Loyola said: It is not the richness of science which satisfies the soul, but feeling and tasting things from within. This Book deals with Prayer and Spiritual life, with the experience of Grace and Goodness, through discernment of evil and human passions in everyday experience. It is a beautiful and simple proposal to construct our spiritual life through Discernment and Prayer of the Heart

The Mystery of Good & Evil; The Serpent in the Heart's Paradise; Vigilance of the Heart; The Discernment of Spirits; The Eight Evil Thoughts; Personal Experience; The Psycophysical Method of the Hesychasts; Praying "In The Heart"; Epilogue.