Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew 6:19-24 contains Christ’s memorable words to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” In the same pericope, he goes on to talk about the “eye” being the “lamp of the body,” and that the state of the eye determines the condition of the body. If the eye is “good” than the body is “full of light,” but if the eye is dark, then the “whole body will be full of darkness.” In the same section, Jesus teaches that “No one can serve two masters,” and that “you cannot serve God and mammon (riches).”

I would like to say something about the “eye” in this passage. A traditional interpretation of this figure of speech would understand the “eye” as the “mind.” However, the word ‘mind’ immediately brings all kind of unhelpful resonances and rationalistic explanations about ‘knowing’ that we have accumulated over time in the West. What does it mean to have our mind illuminated, as Jesus seems to be saying?

An apostolic answer to this question would involve the mind (the nous in Greek), but not as we tend to think of it. The nous is the God-given capacity in the human for relationship with God. The nous is that organ that spiritually senses God, not through syllogistic thinking, but through direct, receptive experience.

A basic daily process in our lives, then, involves the “renewal of our minds,” as St Paul says. Such renewal involves direct experience of God, not simply knowing about God, and that experience from the very telos of our lives.

Through prayer, sacraments, works of charity, etc., we seek for God to illuminate our souls and fill us with his presence, and that light changes us radically.

Yours in Christ,

—Justin