“The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.” Matthew 6: 22-23
When I heard a priest discuss this passage during a past Mass, he explained that Jesus used the term “eye” to refer to the human soul.
Considering what Jesus said here, we might get a bit of perspective on what happened in Aurora, Colo., recently. During the premiere of the movie, ominously called The Dark Knight Rising, a man took four guns into a crowded midnight opening, threw tear gas canisters into the crowd so people could not see to escape, and then started firing without mercy, killing 12 including a young child, and injuring more than 50.
Such tragedies seem to be happening with greater frequency every day, as anyone who watches television news knows. While viewing the news coverage of this most recent event, I heard a psychiatrist say this shooter obviously suffered from mental “illness,” and the psychiatrist vehemently criticized another program host who had called this man “evil.”
I have my doubts that the treatment of modern psychology, including medication, would have solved all the problems of this man who called himself the “Joker.” In Catholic circles, you may have heard it said that many of society’s psychiatric ills could be cured inside the confessional. Unfortunately, modern society and most psychiatrists have little concept of the effects of sin on the human soul.
I’m not sure what definition this psychologist uses for the term evil, but I can guess that a spiritual interpretation, and possibly even a belief in God, does not enter into it. Those of us who do believe already know that evil is what a person becomes in the absence of God. God is love, and absence of God means “no love.”
Jesus Christ called himself the “Light of the World.” He gave us his Body and Blood in the Eucharist so those of us who partake can be filled with His light.
Because of the sacrifice of love made by Jesus Christ, there is no limit to the sanctity that a human person can reach as he imbibes the grace of God available through prayer and recourse to the sacraments. “O happy fault…which gained us so great a redeemer!” CCC 412
