The Evil Eye / 20.06.1999
Today’s Gospel starts with the Lord’s blessed saying: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are evil your whole body will be full of darkness”. Eyes do not refer here to the body part found in the face but to the inner vision, the soul’s vision. Shakespeare talks about this in his play “Julius Caesar” saying: “The wrong, my dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in our souls”. What can the vision that’s in you see? It can either see God in front of you at all times and therefore you’d be healthy (modest), or it could be directed towards the ground and therefore you will be like an eye that has cancer or blue eye disease where a thickness in the lens prevents vision.
The simple or healthy eye is loving, while the other eye envies and therefore everything will seem dark. The world would seem beautiful when you have a beautiful vision, and it would seem dark when your internal vision is dark.
People believe that the green-eye is harmful. The church doesn’t admit that a person could harm another through envying. The person that envies can only harm himself. Even though we do have a prayer to remove the harm of the green-eye, this isn’t an admission about the existence of the “harmful eye”. The prayer helps the person that feels “hit” by this harm to be liberated from this fear, and this is why this prayer quotes from the Psalm and says: “The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” and “I feel no evil, for you are with me”.
The envious person ruins his soul because he carries hatred. I mention here that while hearing once the confession of a man that asked me to help him in confession, I asked him: “Do you have jealousy?” He answered: “yes”. Then I told him: “What would you lose if you thought that you are beautiful, and others are too? What do you lose if you thought that you are intelligent and believed, at the same time, that many of you friends also have a lot of intelligence?” Beauty and intelligence are common between people, and therefore God shall be glorified through this.
The person who loves should be happy for the fact that gifts are distributed and miscellaneous. Gifted people lead us to praise the God that gave them the good things they have. No one of us could have all the good things for himself. When you recognize these gifts in others you shall enhance yourself and progress, while when you envy you shall fight the person whom you are envying and, therefore, you shall live in constant bitterness in which you hurt yourself.
If you recognized goodness in you thank God, and if you recognized it in others also be thankful because the only God has shined over both of you. On the other hand, if you saw badness in people you should be sad for this, and pray for the person perhaps God embraces him through his mercy. Inspire all people to see the glory, dignity, and purity so that they could assimilate Christ’s simplicity.
Of course, you cannot withhold your qualities; your qualities shine and their brightness could make the envier more envious. However, do not lose hope from his repentance. His lord might be merciful one day and make him see the beauties of the world, gain the simplicity of vision, and learn to praise. Perhaps envy comes from fear or Insecurity. It is, for sure, a kind of weakness in faith. You often find yourself unable to lead the envier into light. Here, you have no solution except to continue praying for the person that hates you, and he has his God who shall deal with this: He might cure him in a time of satisfaction. You should believe that all people are better than you and be thankful.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “العين الشريرة” – 20.06.1999
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