Chapter LXV: Custody of the Eyes

IF you will really guard your heart or your thoughts from evil, you must guard your eyes and your ears from seeing or hearing what is evil. The eyes are justly called the windows of the soul. Now, you know, if you stand gazing out of the windows you cannot help thinking of what you see; your mind will become filled with images and pictures of what your eyes behold. So, if you look on any impure sight to notice it, it will be sure to create evil thoughts in your mind.

Perhaps if you had the best will in the world you could not entirely avoid every evil sight, because such things present themselves sometimes suddenly to view; but in that case turn your eyes away immediately with horror, and no impression will be made on your mind. On the other hand, you can readily perceive that to dwell on any evil sight, even for a short time, would produce a considerable impression and be a very evil thing.

For this reason Job, that saint of God, says he made a covenant with his eyes not so much as to look upon a woman. Oh! what a virtue here is, to be so bent on pleasing our Maker as to turn away instantly, not only from every evil sight, but from every dangerous object that may meet our eyes! Such faithfulness renders us very dear to God.

But in order to acquire this modesty of the eyes, it is necessary to restrain them from looking at everything that presents itself; to have it habitually at heart to keep down an idle curiosity to see everything. Downcast eyes accompany the chaste spirit, and indicate an inward purity.

Women of true modesty do not gaze here and there fixedly as they walk the streets, but look around, if at all, with a great deal of reserve.

It is, indeed, a hateful and repulsive sight to see the airs of a vain or bold woman. Her whole soul shows itself in her dress, and walk, and eyes, as she goes along, sweeping the streets with her train, with a toss of her head and an affected walk, and her eyes gazing boldly about. Who feels anything but sorrow at the sight? sorrow that an immortal soul should be so perverted from the intention God had in creating it; sorrow at the spiritual ruin betokened; sorrow that a human being can become so debased. Could such persons see the hearts of those who look at them and read each secret thought regarding them, they would soon learn to despise themselves and to change their demeanor.

What looks well in a turkey or a peacock, an irrational dumb beast, looks very ugly and unbecoming in a woman with an immortal soul. Be careful, then, of your eyes, how you allow them to gaze about.

St. Francis of Assisi once said to a brother: “Come, brother, let us go out into the city and preach the Gospel.” So they went out and walked about a good while, and at last came back to the house without either of them speaking a word. On entering the house again the brother said: “Father Francis, I thought you said we were going out to preach, but here we are again without having opened our mouths.” “Brother,” says he, “we have preached a most eloquent sermon to all who observed us, by the modest and recollected way in which we have walked the streets of the town.”

By the habit of modestly avoiding curious and fixed gazing in the streets, or out of windows in public places, you will avoid a thousand sights which would be dangerous to your souls, although you had no bad intention whatever in such gazing.