In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful
All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, and peace and greetings be upon our Master Muhammad, and upon his pure Household, and may God curse all their enemies
“I wish to explain this truth to you,” Hazrat Jesus (pbuh) told the apostles, “You will not be pleased if you have a body which is clean on the surface but dirty on the inside.” For example, if one’s body looks healthy and good, but if underneath one’s clothes, one is sick with a disease, is wounded or dirty, this is not a good thing. It would not be good if you looked at someone’s face and appearance and saw them to be neat and healthy, but when they removed their clothes, you saw that their body was wounded, infected or the like. Well, similarly, “You would not be pleased if you had a healthy body but a corrupt heart.” If your body is healthy, but God forbid your heart is corrupt, this is the same idea. Because your existence is a combination of your external appearance and your inner nature. It is not enough to fix your face but continue having a corrupt heart. You should attend to your inner nature. You should correct your heart.
“Likewise, you would not be pleased if you cleansed your skin while your hearts continued to be impure.” Hazrat Jesus told his apostles that it is not enough to attend to their skin while their hearts are impure and dirty. After this, he tells them, “Do not be like a sieve.” The Arabic word “al-monkhol” means a sieve, a strainer. He mentions a sieve because, “It allows the fine, clean wheat to pass through, but holds the debris back.” He asks his apostles not to be like this. “Similarly, utter wise words but keep the impurities inside your chests.” It seems as if he is addressing us today. He tells his apostles that their speaking should be like a sieve which allows the clean wheat to come out, but keeps back the enmities, the bitterness, the contaminations, and the impurities inside their chests.
“Oh servants of this world, your story is like a lamp which casts light on the people but which burns on the inside.” The lamp itself burns but it casts light on others. Well, this could be said in praise, but it could also be said in criticism. In Farsi we say that ‘such and such’ person burns like a candle to give light to others. Very well, this is praise from this point of view. It means that they endure difficulties to enlighten others. However, this simile could have a critical tone, and Hazrat Jesus is addressing his apostles from this perspective. He says that they do not benefit from their own wisdom and their own endeavors. “Benefit” does not mean money, position or title. Rather, it means spiritual and psychological profits, transcendence, human virtues and closeness to God. He tells the apostles that they themselves do not profit from their own wisdom but others do.
We encourage the youth to pray, and as a result, they worship God and tread the path of purity and spirituality. They even enter the arena of Jihad and achieve transcendence, but we ourselves sink in our own quagmire keeping our shackles on. This is very dangerous. We should purify our intentions and not just address our words to others. We should first address our own hearts.
I read in the biography of the late Sheikh Hassan Ali Isfahani Nokhodaki – our fellow-townsman from Mashhad. He said, “I recited several thousand repetitions of God’s names (dhikr) for my own dark heart every day.” This is really good. Such is the importance of dhikr. One should repeat these prayers for one’s own heart. Our dead hearts should read and recite the dhikr “There is no god but Allah” and also “I ask God to forgive me” for themselves. This is the first thing that matters. How good it is if when a person reads the supplication “ Dua Kumayl” for a crowd of people, he does not just read it for others. He should read it for himself as well. Some people read prayers only for others. This is how it is.
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