“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. The radical surgery language is hyperbole — Jesus is not prescribing self-mutilation but communicating the seriousness of the interior life's demands. If something as valuable as a right eye or a right hand (verse 30) must be sacrificed to prevent sin, the sacrifice is worth making: the partial loss is better than the total loss. Colossians 3:5 uses similar language — put to death what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, evil desire — the mortification of sinful desires is the interior-life discipline that Jesus is describing through the shock of the surgical metaphor.
Church Fathers on Matthew 5:29
Because we ought not only to avoid actual sin, but even put away every occasion of sin, therefore having taught that adultery is to be avoided not in deed only, but in heart, He next teaches us to cut off the occasions of sin.
But if according to that of the Prophet, 'there is no whole part in our body,' [Ps 38:3] it is needful that we cut off every limb that we have that the punishment may be equal to the depravity of the flesh.
Therefore by the right eye and the right hand we must understand the love of brethren, husbands and wives, parents and kinsfolk; which if we find to hinder our view of the true light, we ought to sever from us.
Read all 11 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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