12 December 2026 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light.” Luke 11:34
Hebrews warns: “Take care… that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’.” The generation in the desert did not enter God's rest because of unbelief. Today is always the day to listen.
Jesus speaks of the eye as the lamp of the body: what we look at shapes what we become. “Consider whether the light in you is not darkness.” In the weeks before Christmas, guarding our eyes and hearts makes room for the true Light who is coming into the world.
Theme: “Today, if you hear his voice.”
Do not harden your heart; let the eye be a lamp full of light.
“O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness.” Psalm 95:7–8
“As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”” Hebrews 3:15
Apply: Listen to God in five minutes of silence today.
“Two are better than one… For if they fall, one will lift up the other.” Ecclesiastes 4:9–10
“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Hebrews 3:13
Apply: Encourage a friend in faith today.
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Psalm 119:105
“Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy, your body is full of darkness. Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness.” Luke 11:34–35
Apply: Choose wholesome content today.
Today is the day to listen.
Let Christ's light fill us.
Take-home resolution: Fast from harmful content until Christmas.
Dear friends, the Letter to the Hebrews gives a warning: take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God (Hebrews 3:12). Faith is not lost in one day. It drifts away little by little when the heart grows hard.
The writer remembers the generation in the desert: they saw God's wonders, yet they grumbled and did not trust, and so they did not enter the promised rest. Faith must be renewed day by day.
Then he gives the remedy: exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13). We need one another. A Christian alone easily grows cold, like a coal taken out of the fire.
In the Gospel Jesus says: your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy, your body is full of darkness (Luke 11:34). What we look at shapes who we become.
Our eyes today are flooded with images: violence, impurity, luxury, envy. Hours on the screen can fill the soul with darkness without our noticing. Jesus asks us to guard the lamp of the eye.
This Nombu, consider a fast of the eyes: less time on the phone, no impure images, more time looking at the Gospel, at the faces of our families, at the beauty of creation, at the crib.
And let us encourage one another. Send a word of faith to a friend who has drifted. Invite someone to the Holy Qurbana. Today, while it is called today, let us not harden our hearts. Amen.
Children, your eyes are like windows. Let good things come in through them, and your heart will be full of light!
Lord, light of the world, keep my heart soft to your voice today, and fill my eyes and my whole being with your light. Amen.
Both readings ask about the inner state of the heart and the eye. Hebrews warns against a heart that hardens slowly, and takes Israel in the desert as its example. Jesus says that the eye is the lamp of the body, and asks whether the light in us is really light. Nearing Christmas, the Church asks us not only whether we are busy for God, but what we are looking at, and whether we can still hear his voice today.
Setting.
The author has just quoted Psalm 95 (Hebrews 3:7–11), with its memory of Israel's testing of God in the desert (Exodus 17:1–7; Numbers 14). The whole generation that left Egypt, except Joshua and Caleb, failed to enter the land. The readers of Hebrews are believers growing tired under pressure, and they face the same danger. This passage is a preacher's commentary on the psalm.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” (3:12)
The danger is described as a condition of the heart, not of the intellect. Note “none of you”: the author is concerned for each one.
“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (3:13)
The remedy is shared. Christians are responsible for each other's faith. Sin “deceives”: it hardens without our noticing.
“So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.” (3:19)
They had seen the wonders of the Exodus. Having seen wonders is not the same as trusting God now.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism writes that when the Church celebrates the mystery of Christ, one word marks her prayer: “Today!” (CCC 1165). It also teaches, quoting this same psalm, that it is in the present that we meet God, not yesterday or tomorrow but today (CCC 2659). So every Holy Qurbana is an answer to the psalm: God speaks now, and the hearer responds now.
Setting.
Jesus has been speaking to crowds who ask for a sign (11:16, 29). He has said that the only sign is Jonah, and that the queen of the South and the people of Nineveh will judge this generation. The light is already among them; the trouble is in the eyes that look at it. Immediately afterward he eats at a Pharisee's house (11:37). Matthew has similar sayings in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:15; 6:22–23).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar, but on the lampstand so that those who enter may see the light.” (11:33)
A note on the text. The POC has “or under a measure” (പറയുടെ കീഴിലോ). Some ancient manuscripts have those words, as in Matthew 5:15, and others, followed by the NRSV, omit them. The sense does not change. Christ is not a hidden light.
“Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light;” (11:34)
The problem is not lack of light but how we look at it. The same Jesus was seen by some as God's envoy and by others as a threat.
“Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness.” (11:35)
One of the most searching sentences in the Gospels: what I take as my light may itself be darkness. It calls for honest self-examination.
How the Church reads it.
St Augustine, commenting on Matthew's form of this saying, takes the eye to be the intention with which we act: if the intention is pure, the whole work is full of light (in substance). The Catechism says that intention lies at the voluntary source of our actions, though a good intention does not by itself make a wrong act right (CCC 1752–1753). Vatican II opens its teaching on the Church with Christ as the light of the nations, a light that shines out on the face of the Church (Lumen Gentium 1).
Can a baptised believer really lose faith, as Hebrews warns?
Yes. Faith is God's gift, but we can lose it if we do not care for it. The Catechism says that to live, grow and persevere in faith we must nourish it with the word of God and beg the Lord to increase it (CCC 162). Hebrews does not aim to frighten but to keep us near each other and near God.