Jesus speaks, with incredible bluntness, about cutting off one’s hand and foot and plucking out of one’s own eye. If these things are a block to your salvation, get rid of them, for it is better to enter life maimed than to enter Gehenna with all of your limbs and members. The hand is the organ by which we reach out and grasp things. The soul is meant for union with God, but we have, instead, reached out to creatures, all of our energies, grasping at finite things. The Lord also speaks of the foot. The foot is the organ by which we set ourselves on a definite path. We are meant to walk on the path which is Christ. Do we? Or have we set out down a hundred errant paths leading to glory, honor, power, or pleasure? We are designed to seek after and look for God. Have we spent much of our lives looking in all the wrong places, beguiled by the beauties and enticements of this world? And are we willing to pluck out our eye spiritually, to abandon many of the preoccupations that have given us pleasure? God’s life-giving presence is a gift that is always within us. He remains faithful to us, even when we are unfaithful to him. God leaves us totally free in our relationship with him, but the misuse of our freedom can cause us significant suffering. And so, God asks us to cut out of our lives anything that blocks our ability to receive his love.