“And when you pray,” he said,
“do not close your eyes and bow your heads,
for those who place this burden
breaking young backs have only to lift
their eyelashes to condemn you.

“You have said, ‘The eye that causes sin
is torn out and thrown to the birds.’
But I say to you if your eyelid leads you to stumble 
there no longer remains a sacrifice
for the light of your body.¹
If a lamp is put under a basket, 
will not body and soul both be consumed?

“Instead,” he went on, “look to the most glory
when you pray, raising holy faces 
in all my Father’s house. For in the lighting of many lights
is His delight, and His soul rejoices 
to see His little ones shine.”

And so he called radiance the glory of God, and they sought to condemn him.² For they perceived that he was making beauty equal to³ God, the imprint of His nature.

¹ Some manuscripts add “…for the light in you has become darkness.”

² Or, “And though he proclaimed the radiance of God’s glory, they sought to condemn him.”

³ Or, “of like kind with”