621 chapter 14: the doors of the mystical temple about a maiden;124 those who make no such pact do have such thoughts. If the mother of the human race had not seen the fruit pleasing to the eyes,125 she would not have lost original justice. By a careless guarding of his eyes even that most just king David brought forth two monsters within the sanctuary of his mind: adultery and murder. He stared at Bathsheba and killed Uriah; that she might be possessed, the other had to perish.126 Alipius, certainly the most religiously scrupulous companion of St. Augustine, lamented for a long time that he had gazed with attention at the Roman amphitheater shows.127 The Prince of the Apostolic College did not hesitate to call “irrational beasts” (2 Pet 2:12) [LV] those men who have “eyes full of adultery and of sin that does not cease” (2 Pet 2:14) [LV]. For in truth, one sins unceasingly when these doors of the Mystical Temple are wide open everywhere and to everything. There is more than one Christian, to whom God can say, when driven away from his heart: “Your eyes have made me fly away.”128 As soon as anything base and evil flies into the soul through the eyes, at once Beauty and the Supreme Good fly away. Will you then not keep these doors closed, you who desire God to dwell with you, and you yourself with God? He certainly remained with the most modest youth Blessed Aloysius Gonzaga, who visited the Empress daily for three years, and never looked at her.129 He remained with the recently canonized St. Peter of Alcantara, the 124 Cf. Job 31:1. 125 Cf. Gen 3:6. 126 Cf. 2 Kings 11:3. 127 Cf. Augustinus, Confessions..., Bk. VI, 8. 128 Cf. Cant 6:4 “turn away your eyes from me, for they have made me flee away.” 129 St. Aloysius Gonzaga SJ, (d. 1591). Father Papczyński may have known his life from a book written in Italian by Fr. Virgilio Cepari, printed in Rome in 1606 (followed by translations into many other languages) where one may read of the modesty of eyes of this saint. “Having traveled from Italy to Spain in the company of the Empress, and having gone almost every day, ... nonetheless so great was the modesty of his eyes that he declared to him that he had never seen her, and had never once gazed at her face, so that if he had seen her again, he would not have recognized her.” (Cepari Virgilio, Life of St. Luigi Gonzaga of the Company of Jesus, Alba 1928, p. 69).
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