DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Sunday, July 29, 2018

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light,  but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! – Matthew 5:22,23

I am an aging man with diabetes.  And men like me usually struggle with eye problems, the consequence of the deterioration that diabetes does bring.  And as a result, I have my eyes checked quite regularly.  Still … there are those mornings when my vision is rather cloudy.  Our eyes truly are both windows into a person’s soul and a window to the world around us.

Prayer, especially contemplative prayer, lingering prayer that asks for a clearer vision and a deeper look, is about keeping healthy the eyes of one’s soul.  This quality of prayer is about removing the specks of dust in one’s own eyes.  This quality of prayer is about polishing the lens so that clarity might be found.  This quality of prayer is finding one’s focus so that the Divine Light might fill one’s soul with both life’s wonders and needs.

Such a sad, tragic state it is to have one’s eyes so damaged that only a deepening Darkness fills one’s soul.  And what is this Darkness?  It is bitterness; it is hatred; it is fear; it is hostility; it is distortion of values; it is prejudice; it is greed; it is self-centeredness; it is lust in all its pursuits; it is jealousy; it is envy; it is even hypocrisy that seeks to hide the shadows within us.

In our present day, I find so many who seem to be afflicted with such blurred vision that a growing darkness is overtaking their souls.  Blinded by the shimmer of gold, blinded by the allure of power, blinded by a desperate need to control the world that frightens them, we are quickly losing clarity of vision and the Light that it brings.

Take care of the eyes of the soul for the blindness is blind to its advance.

Always in Christ’s Service,

Fr. Charitas de la Cruz