How can the gifts of mind and discernment be sanctified?

The answer

If we bear the image God, we realize that He granted us a human mind, and offered us the gift of discernment, that we might seek the knowledge of God, even in our worship of Him. As the scholar Origen says, “as the eye naturally seeks the light and vision, and our body naturally desires food and drink, so our mind is possessed with a becoming and natural desire to become acquainted with the truth of God and the causes of things. Now we have received this desire from God.”⁴⁷⁰ St. Jacob of Sarug says, “We do not come to church without discernment, as if we were animals that lack understanding. No one visits a physician out of habit; only when illness forces him to visit in order to seek healing.”⁴⁷¹

St. Jacob of Sarug speaks imaginatively of the exaltedness of the mind in human life. Since the mind is situated in the human head, he likens it to the heights wherein God dwells — namely, heaven. “[God] perfected the brain as a dwelling for the mind; the mind thus resides in the upper level, as does God.”⁴⁷² He warns us not to neglect to sanctify it, nor to allow it to stray into accepting the lusts of the flesh that darken the mind and cast down the soul under the slavery of the body, till its being becomes carnal. “The mind is darkened with lusts, lest it understand … his soul falls and becomes carnal.”⁴⁷³

Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty