Romans 5:1-10; Matthew
6:22-33
Have you ever noticed that people
can look at the same thing and see something entirely different? Some see beauty while others behold ugliness. Some recognize virtue and others perceive
corruption. Some are fascinated and
others are simply bored. The difference is not in what they are looking
at but in the eye of the beholder. If
that is true in everyday matters, how much more is it true in what it means to
know and experience God with the eye of the soul.
Christ said that “The eye
is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye
is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil, your
whole body will be full of darkness. If
then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” Christ is the light of the world, and to know
Him means to share in His life so fully that we become radiant with His gracious
divine energies from the depths of our souls.
The eyes of our hearts must become fully transparent to Him in order for
us to fulfill our calling: “You are the light of the
world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it
under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine
before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matt.
5:14-16)
The eyes of our souls must be clear,
focused, and full of the light of Christ for us to see anything in the world truthfully. For example, all our earthly goods and
resources are blessings from God to be offered back to Him for the
accomplishment of His gracious purposes, especially to care for “the least of
these” with whom Christ identified Himself. Gaining the spiritual clarity to see them as
such is necessary for obeying His teaching that “You cannot serve God and
mammon.” The eyes of our souls must be cleansed
for us to avoid the common failing of making money and possessions our false
gods. Those who entrust themselves to them
inevitably face temptations toward worry, fear, and resentment. They can all vanish in an instant, and
everyone else is a potential threat to them.
As the Lord taught, “the Gentiles seek all these things; and your
heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things
shall be yours as well.”
The spiritual disciplines of the
Apostles Fast call us to clarify our spiritual vision and gain the strength to
see all the blessings of this life truthfully and not according to our
passions. Our first step is to lift up
our hearts to God in prayer each day. To
become receptive to the healing light of our Lord, we must persistently open
the darkened eyes of our souls to Him. The
point is not how we feel when we pray, how many prayers we say, or how long we stand
before our icons. We all need to open our hearts to Him as best
we can as we focus our minds on the words of the Jesus Prayer, the Trisagion
Prayers, the Psalms, or whatever simple order of prayer we are using. Short prayers with focus and humility are
better than long ones with distraction and pride. (Remember the parable of the Pharisee
and the Publican.) A short rule of prayer followed consistently is far better
than an elaborate one rarely used. If we want healing from the blindness and
anxiety of entrusting ourselves to the things of this world, we must focus our
darkened spiritual eyes on the light of Christ each day of our lives.
Fasting helps to cleanse our spiritual
vision because what we do with our bodies impacts our souls. When
we refuse to indulge ourselves with the richest foods, we gain strength for
resisting other temptations to gratify ourselves with money, power,
possessions, or pleasure. Fasting is a
tool for learning to see our appetites for what they are and to know
experientially that serving ourselves is not the path to peace. The more enslaved we are to our passions, the
more worry, fear, and anger we will have when they are not satisfied. We must embrace the struggle to pray and fast
in order to become humbly receptive to the brilliant light of Christ, Who
illumines even the darkest dimensions of the human person in the world as we
know it.
Almsgiving is fueled by prayer, for the
gracious mercy of the Lord becomes characteristic of those who unite themselves
to Him from their hearts. Fasting heals the
self-centered desires that hinder us from seeing and serving Christ in our
suffering neighbors. Those who fast with
integrity will spend less money and time on their own meals, thus freeing up
resources to bless others. Giving generously
to the needy and in support of the ministries of the Church helps to heal us
from the passion of worshiping blindly at the altars of money and
possessions. It teaches us that the material
blessings of creation are not ends in themselves but gifts to be offered back
to God, like the bread and wine of the Eucharist. “Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee,
on behalf of all and for all.”
When we seek to open our darkened
spiritual eyes to the brilliant light of Christ through prayer, fasting, and
merciful generosity, we will have to struggle mightily with the darkness that
remains in us, as well as with so much in our culture that encourages us to find
the meaning of our lives in possessions, power, and pleasure. Looking to the examples of the apostles,
however, we must not despair. Saint Paul
endured great hardships of many kinds and ultimately died as a martyr. He gained
the spiritual clarity to write that, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing
that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and
character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love
has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to
us.”
Saint Paul knew
that the only way to make such struggles points of entrance to the blessedness
of the Kingdom was to endure them with faithfulness, no matter the cost. He did not do so merely by his own willpower,
but “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
which has been given to us.” As St. Paul taught, “Since we are justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have obtained access to this
grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of
God.” The Savior did not come to help us
become better adjusted to the darkness of our hearts or of the fallen
world. He comes to make us radiant with
the eternal light of Heaven by grace. He
calls us to become so receptive to the healing presence of the Holy Spirit that
we behold His glory and see all the joys and struggles of this life as they
truly are before Him. Christ calls us to
share so fully in His life that we seek first His kingdom with the humble trust
that overcomes anxiety about literally anything. Remember that when He said, “Do not be
anxious about your life,” He was addressing His disciples as fellow Jews living
under Roman occupation who would literally suffer and die for Him. By His
glorious resurrection, the Savior has conquered even the dark pit of the grave
and liberated us from slavery to the fear of death.
Today none of us has perfect spiritual clarity and we
often find ourselves anxious about very small things. That is why we must do what we can today to open
the eyes of our souls to Christ through prayer, fasting, and generosity. That is how we will grow in our ability to resist
the temptation to entrust ourselves to any of the false gods of this
world. The daily circumstances of our lives all
provide countless opportunities to become more receptive to the brilliant light
of the Lord. If we will use them for our
salvation, and humbly repent whenever we have not, then the light of Christ
will illumine us as we unite ourselves evermore fully to Him. That
is how we may all learn to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” in a
world that remains so full of darkness and presents so many temptations to idolatry
and fear. He is the light that we all need
to see ourselves and our world clearly as we come to share more fully by grace
in His healing and restoration of the human person in the image and likeness of
God.
