17 June 2016
Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
In A Temple for the Holy Ghost, Flannery O’Connor tells a story of two girls who were calling each other Temple One and Temple Two. They developed the names because the oldest nun at their convent school had given them a lecture on what to do if a young man should put their heads on his lap. The Nun told her to say,” Stop sir! I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost!” If they had gone to a regular school, they would not have done anything but think about boys. At the covent school, the nuns kept a tight grip the girls’ desires.
In today Gospel, Jesus said, “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.” Jesus’ words are a reminder for us to pay attention to what we watch with our eyes. We live in the era where we were exposed to many images in social media and internet. We can be overwhelmed with many different images every day and our eyes are utterly confused. Jesus reminds us about the well-being of our eyes because what we see signifies where our treasure is and there also where our heart is. By the end of the day, we could examine whether we put our treasure in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Flickr or in heaven.