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(1 Thess. 3, 9–13; Luke 11, 34–41) “The lamp of the body is the eye” (Luke 11:31); and the lamp of the soul is the mind. Just as when the bodily eye is intact, everything around us in our external life is visible to us and we know how and where to go and what to do, so with a sound mind, everything in our inner life is visible to us, in our attitude towards God and our neighbors and in how we should behave ourselves. The mind, the highest side of the soul, combines the feeling of the Divine, the demands of conscience and the aspiration of the best, in comparison with everything that we possess and know. When the mind is healthy, the fear of God, conscientiousness and unfetteredness by anything external reign in the soul, and when it is unhealthy, God is forgotten, the conscience is lame in both molds *20 and the soul is completely mired in what is visible and possessed. In the latter case, a person has a dark night: concepts are confused, there is discord in affairs, and there is a joyless heaviness in the heart. Contiguous circumstances push him, and he is drawn after them, like a chip along the flow of a stream. He does not know what has been done so far, what he is now and how his path will end. On the contrary, he who has a sound mind, fearing God, conducts his affairs with prudence, listens to one law of conscience, which gives a monotonous structure to his whole life, and does not plunge into the sensual, crying out with the hope of future bliss. Because of this, his view of the entire course of life, with all its touches, is clear and for him “everything is as bright as a lamp illuminating someone with radiance” (Luke 11:36). You might be interested in: