“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna.” (Matthew 5:29.)
Saint Jerome offers the following insight on this verses from today’s Gospel proclamation:
“Since Jesus spoke before about lust for a woman, he now rightly refers to an unruly thought or feeling as an eye. By the right hand and other members of the body the onset of the will and emotions is suggested. Thus what we conceive in the mind we might complete with an act. Hence we must be aware that what is best in us may soon devolve into a vice. If your right eye and your right hand are an occasion of sin to you, how much more is this true of the left members. If your soul begins to slip, how much more the body, which has a greater tendency to sin. In other words, in the right eye and the right hand of one’s siblings and wife and children and relatives and neighbors, an emotion is indicated. If we perceive they are an obstacle to us in contemplating the true light, we must cut off those parts. Otherwise, in our desire to profit from others, we may perish for all eternity. Hence it is said concerning the high priest whose soul is dedicated to the worship of God: “He shall not defile himself for mother and father and children.” That is, he shall have affection only for the One to whose worship he is dedicated.” (Commentary on Matthew, 1.)
Collect
O God, from Whom all good things come,
grant that we, who call on You in our need,
may at Your prompting discern what is right,
and by Your guidance do it.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
grant that we, who call on You in our need,
may at Your prompting discern what is right,
and by Your guidance do it.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen
