hey everyone thanks for tuning in I'd like to make a short reflection upon the value of our eyes we might call this Christian eyes or how to heal the eyes how to make your eyes servants of Christ and servants of his kingdom you know the church fathers describe eyesight as the most refined in precious of all of our senses our eyes are precious and Jesus speaks about this he says that the eye is the lamp of the body what does he mean what does he mean he means that through the eye were filled what you
gaze upon fills you what you look at you touch Saint Basil the Great says it this way he says the eyes are like two bodyless arms this is how precious this is how powerful eyes are an eye sight is and the scriptures describe both virtues of the eyes and also vices are sins of the eyes for instance we can look with the eye of compassion we in many ways the progress of Christian life is learning to look at people and the world the way that Jesus looks at people in the world he as a real
human being with real eyes used his eyes perfectly he never once sinned with his eyes he looked as the god man through these incredible eyes that he had been given these humanized and he demonstrates to us how to use our eyes virtuously Christian eyes are meant to gaze upon truth through our eyes we can read the Word of God we can gather as a straight line right from our eyes into our mind and then hopefully settling in our hearts we can gaze upon truth which is a precious gift from God to us eyes are also
meant to gaze upon beauty if what we gaze upon fills us and if we use our eyes to gaze upon truth to read the sacred scriptures the writings of the church fathers beautiful literature uplifting things then we fill ourselves with truth to look upon beauty of nature what God has created which is so important I would suggest more important today than at any time in recent human history why because we are in a time of intense urbanization and intense a degradation visual degradation so much is changing were such an unrooted people in the West we've
cut our cords to sacred tradition and to history so much that to go and out into nature to look upon that which God has fashioned and which has existed for thousands and thousands of years is a complete deluge of beauty we are completely overwhelmed with magnificence and we remember that all the johnny-come-lately revolutionaries who are selling human happiness with absolute lies and deceit and don't they fill the West today don't they fill the United States today they're everywhere in the media today making all sorts of promises and all sorts of nonsense to go out into
nature is to hear the voice of God the heavens declare the glory of God the firmament proclaims the work of his hands day today pours forth speech night tonight reveals knowledge there is no place where his voice is not heard this is the the witness of the Magnificent Sun and the blue sky and the majestic ocean and the mighty trees there's so much beauty there and our eyes are designed to gaze upon that and through that gaze to be uplifted transformed to become a worshiper of God and his majestic handiwork and I would say for
science the importance of going out into nature and remembering the beauty of the Lord it's extremely important for us also to surround ourselves with sacred art and by that I mean what the church considers to be the sacred arts beautiful music beautiful structures sacred architecture of our churches and monasteries sacred icon painting these sacred arts eunuch eight to us especially the face of our Savior the face of the mother of God this infuses into the interior life of a person who gazes upon a sacred icon were changed were absolutely changed we're lit up we are
greatly edified and strengthened this is a positive way this is a godly way to use our eyes to try to look on the world the way that Jesus does and then to especially attend to beauty and truth that he has fashioned his own art his own art at the same time the Scriptures warn us of vices or sins of the eye for instance st. John in his first epistle says that we should not love the world for all that's in the world the lust of the eyes the lust of the eyes so this is a
particular vice of the eye is when it lusts for acquisition when it looks upon a material object and desires to take it from another person desires to covet it this is the lust of the eye when it looks upon a seemly form or the body of another person and lusts after it desires to possess it in this selfish way this is the loft of the eyes and Jesus of course talks about this in the Sermon on the Mount when he says that you have heard that it was said do not commit adultery but I say
to you any man who looks on a woman who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart notice the clear connection here between the eyes and the heart that Jesus is presenting like we spoke about at the beginning once you gaze upon fills you what you look at you touch and so we who are believers must turn away from the particular sense of the eyes and of course there's many more for every physical pathology of the eyes cataracts torn retinas stigmatism x' there's a spiritual parallel to
all of those things so there's a way of course to use the eyes and there was a way not to use the eyes we should gaze upon beauty and truth we should view the world and people especially the way that the Lord Jesus did the way that he shows us to use the human eye and we should avoid those particular vices and those particular sins that the Scriptures note [Music] let me say now a few words about the redemption of the eyes when a person comes to the Lord Jesus when he hears the call of
the gospel and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and confesses that he is Lord and comes to the church for catechism which culminates in Holy Baptism we just had this great joy of course as a lot of lots of churches did on Pentecost we weren't able to do our normal baptisms because we were constricted from having services on great and Holy Saturday and so we baptized our catechumens on great penticoff on the whole great feast of Pentecost and one of the actions of the rites of initiation besides a person of course being completely baptized by
trying immersion and immersion which of course includes the eyes join with the rest of the body the death and resurrection of Christ but also after baptism a person is chrismad at the traditional rites of initiation baptism chrismation and eucharist this is the pattern the traditional pattern for Christian initiation both for adults and for children and one of the acts of chrismation is for the priest to take the sacred chrism and to anoint the person with the sign of the Cross to pull it Freight to place the symbol of the Cross on their bodies and especially
on their census so we Chris made on the forehead we Chris made the eyes the nose the mouth the ears the chest the back the hands the feet we consecrate the person's body we communicate that a personal Pentecost to the believer who receives the Holy Spirit and his gift and that sets apart of that person body and soul to the Lord sanctifying them calling them to a life of service what does that mean particularly for the eye well to have your eyes Chris made it means that your eyes are now set apart for God what
you do with your eyes is not just your business you pledged yourself in becoming a Christian to renounce the evil one and all his service and all his Pomp's and all his angels all his works and you publicly pledged yourself to be joined to Christ for your whole life and to serve Him with all of your heart mind soul and strength and that includes the use of your eyes and there are some very beautiful examples on how to do this in the scriptures how to live a sanctified Christian how to sanctified Chris mated eyes think
of the Proverbs proverbs 4 I think it is where King Solomon says I think in verse 25 he says look straight ahead not to the left or to the right this is an incredible piece of wisdom about how the righteous man controls his eyes he seeks to control his eyes and he doesn't just let himself roam that's the message sanctified eyes don't just roam sanctified eyes follow the intention of the soul sanctified eyes are redeemed eyes and the body was made to be the chariot of the soul the soul guides the body and the body
enables the soul to put its good intentions into practice and that happens also with the eye that's what's behind this word don't just look to the left or to the right but look straight ahead be intent make your eyes serve your purpose and serving God another beautiful example is from the prophecy of Job in the 31st chapter of job I believe in the first verse job the much suffering prophet says that he had made a covenant with his eyes a covenant with his eyes that he would not look on a virgin this is an incredible
model of from this righteous man who was so pious that God called him blameless a job had made an agreement between himself God and his eyes that he there were certain things he would not look on and certain things he would and what he would not look on is it would not look in upon a virgin that's a beautiful word it's a beautiful word and you can also I think be benefited by st. Paul's passage in Ephesians chapter 5 in that beautiful epistle where he says that we should have nothing to do nothing to do
with the unfruitful deeds of darkness but instead we should even expose them because we've become light in the Lord the light of the Lord is in us and therefore the things that that occupy the eyes of those who are just living for pleasure and and what is a greater marker then the that this is the last times at least for our culture at least for the declining vapid American culture we this country we love is dying very quickly it is just tumbling down a hill of one corruption after the other and in the pursuit of
pleasure and then running away from God so fast and what the st. Paul says one of the characteristics are the last time when we'll become lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God and one of the ways that we show that we love pleasure rather than God is a undisciplined use of our eyes we just let them go and we can't make a clear demarcation between what a believer looks at and what an unbeliever doesn't look at for us we should be impressed by beauty and truth we should be the love we'd be lovers of
nature where we see God's handiwork lovers of the Scriptures lovers of books lovers of the sacred and all the sacred arts these are the things that really concern us but those things that like pornography which is literally obsessed as actually a death throttling grip upon falling Western culture what do Christians have to do with the unfruitful deeds of darkness we should not only not participate that we should expose them for what they are absolutely degrading you know this year's 2020 this is exactly fifty years before we as a nation fifty years ago we as a
nation made our first kind of public official volley against the threat of the rise of pornography it took place in 1970 I believe was under the presidency of Richard Nixon the president established a Presidential Commission on pornography and in that that commission's report our political leaders said that that pornography was a grave national threat fast forward 16 years ago from 1970 50 years ago to 1986 1986 under the presidency of Ronald Reagan he appointed his eternal gender his attorney general established a commission at the Attorney General's Commission on pornography and appointed a thorough investigation into
the incredible rise of pornography and the documentation of the incredible sorrows that always follow in the Train of pornography what are the tangible social destruction that always follow the rise of pornography I remember that Commission James Dobson a focus of the family was a central figure in that I was in college when it came out and I remember reading it was like 300 pages long it was read think the commission's report I was absolutely blown away to see the always a necessary destruction that follows to personal happiness to marriage to purity to social stability when
pornography explodes that was in 1986 two years later I spent a summer in Prague Czechoslovakia with my wife we had just been married a few months before or a few weeks before rather we went on a missions trip to Prague Czechoslovakia this is a very important time in in Czechs history because it was the summer before the violent revolution when the communism fell in Czechoslovakia and the journalists vaclav havel [Music] shortly after that summer became the president of Czechoslovakia we went back a second summer after the first summer that which was the last summer under
communism at Christmastime The Velvet Revolution took place and in the next summer we went back again and we were amazed at the transformation of the Society of that Communist Society just in a few months we saw the appearance of the what was called the American hospitality center in the square of yon who's therein in Prague we saw a McDonald's I mean McDonald's was created established and running in just a few months so that we saw it there functionally but you know what we also saw as we were coming off the Metro on our second summer
there everywhere huge stacks of grotesque pornography banned by the atheistic communist who knew better but part and parcel of one of the first things that quote-unquote Western freedom particularly in the minds of the Czechs American freedom meant it meant the incredible explosion and the embrace of degrading pornography those concerns of those Commission's both the Presidential Commission of 1970 in the Attorney General's Commission of 1986 of course pale in comparison to the concerns that people who have wisdom and our studying this issue now have with regards to internet pornography which has made access to pornography just
part and parcel of living and the ability to shelter innocence today is virtually unheard of virtually unheard of what a grief truly a sign of falling culture that's consuming itself absolutely slaves to pleasure and not seeking to police God and what's the future I think it's horrific I think it's horrific Christians must be distinguished from non-believers by the use of their eyes right now I don't think there's much distinction I've been a confessor for almost 30 years and I must say nothing has grieved me more then the plague that makes the concern over the coronavirus
irrelevant when when compared to the incredible Great Plague of the soul which is pornography today brothers and sisters may God help us may he visit us and heal us may we live true to the Covenant that we also liked the prophet job have made with him when we were Chris mated either as infants or as adults when we were Chris mated upon our eyes our eyes were set apart we have Christian eyes and the Lord calls us to a fidelity in using this most precious eyesight which he's given to us to look at the world
the way he does with his love and compassion and purity cultivating the virtues of the eye may the Lord visit us all with repentance God be with you thank you for watching this video please pray for us and subscribe below and share this video with your friends and family our pnp ministry has more projects than we have resources would you consider making a tax-deductible contribution to us today thank you and God's help
