The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Day 29
Twenty-ninth Day
The treasure in heaven: The single eye: The impossibility of serving two masters. — Matt. vi. 19, 20, 24.
HERE our Lord tears up avarice by the roots and prevents our ever fearing poverty. To ' have our treasure in heaven ’ is to place all our hopes and affections there; and, again, to send our riches to be stored up there by the hands of the poor and needy.
‘Where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.' This is a grand saying. Consider well what your thoughts are full of, for wherever they naturally turn is the real place of your treasure, and the home of your heart. If your thoughts are filled with God, then are you happy. If with anything merely mortal, which 'the rust and the moth' constantly consume, and corruption lays hold of, then will your treasure escape you, and your heart remain empty and destitute.
The ‘ single eye’ means purity of intention. The eye is single when the intention is upright; and the intention is upright when the heart is undivided. This is what we mean by simplicity and straightforwardness. The ‘ intention ’ is the eye of the soul. We cannot look fixedly at more than one object; and the soul can seize upon only a single good. Uncertain and wandering glances see everything and nothing at the same time; and, in like manner, when the soul squanders itself in vague longings it knows not what it wants, and sinks into indifference. God demands a fixed and determined gaze.
This is confirmed by the words that follow: ‘No man can serve two masters' — or love two things at once. When we know not what we love, and divide our affections between God and the creature, then God refuses the share that we offer Him, and the creature keeps all. We must, therefore, be decided and vigorous in following the path of devotion.
A good intention sanctifies every act of the soul, just as a direct look guides and secures our bodily steps. We ought to renew such an intention often in every day, and continually beg God to strengthen it. We need to be always pulling ourselves up, if we would have a ' single eye ' in all things.
‘You cannot serve God and Mammon.' According to St Paul ‘ covetousness... is the service of idols; ' [1] and those who love good cheer make ' a God of their belly.' [2] We make gods for ourselves out of all the objects we love. Every vicious attachment is idolatry: — and who would willingly serve an idol, and transfer the glory due to God to a false divinity? The very thought horrifies one; and yet it is what everybody, who loves anything more than God, does. His thoughts, his affections, the purest incense of his heart — his Whole worship — goes to that thing, whatever it may be. What misery! Is it really possible that a rational being, possessing the power of offering himself, can make the sacrifice to any object except God?
Uproot, then, from your hearts, avarice, ambition, love of sensuous pleasure — all creature loves; for they are so many idols that you have erected within you. It is not enough for the creature not to have your whole heart: — it must not really possess the least portion of it. Give all to God: — dive to the bottom, and empty out your whole heart to Him! He will know how to take up His abode in it, and to fill it.
To fill oneself with the creature is to fill oneself with such viands as load and satiate, without nourishing; and after feeding on which one straightway hungers again, because they contain no substance that can assimilate with one’s own. What terrible emptiness must follow on such fulness!