Munda cor meum (Cleanse my heart)

"That which is most frequently wanting in order to understand and enjoy the Divine Office is purity of heart—Beati mundo corde. (Blessed are the clean of heart — Matt. 5:8). Cor purum penetrat cælum et infirnum. (a pure heart penetrates to heaven and hell — Imit. ii. 4). There are, says Cassian, an infinite number of God’s languages which men do not understand, because their passions form, as it were, a barrier that prevents these words from coming in all their strength and brightness to them. (Confer. xiv. 14.) Study, no doubt, is useful, and reflection still more so; however, the Holy Ghost can by His interior unction supply these which neither study nor reflection can supply, the want of His grace. Utilis lectio, utilis eruditio sed magis unctio necessaria quæ sola docet nos de omnibus. (Reading is good, and learning good, but above all, anointing is necessary, that anointing that teacheth all things. — St. Bernard.) The venerable Mother Agnes of Jesus often received understanding of the words of the Office although she had never learnt Latin. On the Feast of the Purification, 1626, God poured into her soul so much light on this mystery, that she heard and understood the whole meaning of the psalms and lessons. (Vie par M. de Lantage, p. iii, c. 5.) God granted the same favour several times to S. Luttgarde and to many others. We read in the life of B. Giles, a companion of S. Francis, that he had ordinarily such abundance of light in reciting the psalms that one verse would furnish him with a hundred different expositions. O si semel quid de adipe frumenti unde satiatur Jerusalem degustasses, writes St. Bernard to a religious, one of his friends who was given to study and prayer, quam libenter istas crustas rodendas littera toribus Judæis relinqueres! Experto crede. (If you could once for a moment taste of that bread with which Jerusalem is satisfied, how gladly you would leave your dry crusts for Jewish scholars to gnaw! — Epist. cvi.)" — from The Divine Office - Considered from a Devotional Point of View by M. L’Abbe Bacquez, 1885.