February 5, 2017 St. Thomas More, Toronto
“I am the light of the world,
whoever follows me will have the light of life.”
Have
you noticed how the tiniest ray of light can allow us to see in the darkness?
Physical light is a necessity. We cannot move in safety without it. The same is
true of spiritual light. A soul in darkness cannot survive no matter how bright
the sun is. In God that we live and move and have our being, St. Paul affirms, and
through God’s wisdom we become a “demonstration of Spirit and power” as St.
Paul goes on to assure us in the second reading.
Jesus
declares to our world of darkness: “I am
the light of the world, whoever follows me will have the light of life.” Through him the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled.
Like Isaiah, Jesus shows us that in feeding
the hungry, sheltering the homeless and oppressed, clothing the naked, and
helping the afflicted we allow God’s light to shine. It is through such corporal
works of mercy that his followers become prisms of light to the world. A prism
refracts light so that we may see the many colours and splendor of light.
Last
week we heard the great summary of the Gospel, the beatitudes proclaimed at the
beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. The beatitudes constitute the inner
spiritual logic of God’s life at work in the human soul, orienting our hearts
toward the kingdom of heaven instead of the empire of self. We travel towards
God’s kingdom in poverty of spirit and meekness, trusting in God’s love and
justice for all, accomplished in mercy. This grace, the light of God, produces a
purity of heart and vison – peace so
that even in the midst of persecution, we can offer a blessing instead of a
curse to our persecutors. This path of beatitude is our participation in divine
light, by which the darkness of sin, self and death in our world can be
conquered by the light of love.
Having
offered the apostles the beatitudes, Jesus instructs them concerning how the
principles, grounded in Judeo-Christian culture can be lived. We hear much talk of rights these days, but
there are no rights that are not grounded in the principles built upon a
culture of light and love, a culture of
responsibility and choice for the other rather than the self. We will hear more about that in coming weeks,
but in today’s Gospel Jesus uses two metaphors—salt and light—to describe what
his teaching means for his disciples.
In
the ancient world salt was a critical preservative: dressed with salt, meat was
less susceptible to corruption. It gives flavour to foods, it is an essential
electrolyte that keeps our hearts beating regularly. The Christian is like salt
to the world because by our witness charity is preserved, life is expressed in
joy and the energy of God’s grace flows to the heart of a fallen world,
breaching the walls of the empire of self.
Each
Christian is called to let the “light of the world” shine, dispelling darkness,
living in charity even with our persecutors. This source of this light is
divine grace that becomes visible to others in our words, in gracious acts, in our
personal refusal to resort to “oppression, false accusation or malicious
speech.” And so, as Isaiah promised, the gloom of sin and death shall be overcome;
justice and mercy will be a light shining through the darkness, a gleaming city
on a hill.
“I am the light of the world,
whoever follows me will have the light of life.”
IS
58:7-10; PS 112:4-5, 6-7, 8-9;1 COR 2:1-5; MT 5:13-16.
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