Homily for February 6, 2005
Liturgical Year A-Cycle I
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
by Dcn. Ray Alcouffe
Topic: Being the Light of the World
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Reading I:
Is 58:7-10
Thus says the LORD: Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless; clothe the naked when you see them, and do not turn your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am! If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted;
then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.

Gospel:
Mt 5: 13-16
Jesus said to his disciples: "You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lamp stand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."

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Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

Let’s examine the depth of what that little phrase means. I want to begin with a little story.  I’ve told this story before but I think it fits so well here that I need to repeat it.  Shortly after World War II came to a close, Europe had begun picking up the pieces.  Much of the old country had been ravaged by war and was in ruins.  The saddest sight of all was that of the little orphan children starving in the streets in those war torn cities.  Early one chilly morning, an American soldier was making his way back to his barracks in London.  As he turned the corner in his jeep, he spotted a little boy with his nose pressed to the window of a pastry shop.  Inside the cook was kneading dough for a fresh batch of doughnuts.  The hungry boy stared in silence with his nose pressed against the window, drooling and watching the cook’s every move.  The soldier pulled his jeep to the curb, stopped and got out.  “Son, would you like some of those?”  The boy was startled.  “Oh yeah, I would.”  The soldier stepped inside, bought a dozen, put them in a bag and walked back to where the lad was standing on that foggy morning in London.  He smiled and handed the bag of doughnuts to the boy.  As he was leaving, he felt a tug on his coat.  He looked back and he heard the child ask quietly, “Mister, are you God?” 

You know, many times, many of us find it hard to believe in a God that we cannot see.  We want a God with skin on, a God in person, a God present to us.  For that reason, Jesus came to us--God incarnate.  God become one of us--God with us.  A simple act of compassion is connected with the presence of God.  It was a spark of light in an otherwise dark world for that orphan. 

Now, one of the ways that Jesus tells us who he is is his saying, “I am the light of the world.”  Many times he says this in the Gospel.  “I am the light of the world.”   This is the way of expressing connectiveness to God.  And with Jesus’ connection, that connection is so strong that we know that Jesus is God.  When Jesus in turn tells us, “You are the light of the world”, he is saying that we also are connected to God.  You might ask yourself “Well, what does that connection mean?”  It doesn’t take much thinking to realize that he’s telling me, he’s telling each one of us, that I, myself, am Jesus to the World.  Now just let that sink in a moment.  You, (say your name), are Jesus to the World.   My reaction is “Ah, I don’t think so.  I can’t be.  I’m just me.  There’s no way that I could ever measure up to being Jesus.”  Father John Powell, a Jesuit spiritual counselor from a few years back said that the Jesus who asked us to be recognizable in me, isn’t the perfect, all powerful, all good Jesus.  I know that we could never manage that.  However, it is rather the Jesus who labors in me, who consoles me, who supports me in my human weakness.  He’s the Jesus that shines out in me--that must shine out in me.  In other words, just as the Jesus we know keeps his human integrity while being perfectly connected with God, so we maintain our integrity, our own self, while we are connected with God.  We strive to strengthen and show forth that connectiveness.  That’s what we’re being asked to do when it’s said of us that we are the light of the world. 

Now our Christian vision is that God is love and God wills only our happiness.  So, from our connectiveness to this vision of God, there springs forth an attitude of optimism which in turn affects all of our actions.  St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians tells us, “You are now light in the Lord.  Live as children of light for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.”  Though we may want to push this off to sometime beyond us in our ordinary life, sometime in the future, we can’t.  The future is now.  John Powell says further, “We cannot be expected to exhibit perfection but we must be willing to stand up and offer our personal testimonies to the grace of God in our lives.  You and I should want to say to the world as best we can by our words, and our way of living, by our work, and by our worship, that Jesus has touched my life.  Jesus has touched my life by his kindness, by his encouragement and by his challenge.  I want to say that Jesus has made all the difference in my life.”  Now these words of John Powell resonate deep within me because I really do know that Jesus has touched my life.  He’s touched it through all the decisions I’ve had to make, through all the good times and the bad, and even the tragedies.  But you know the light of my life is the greatest gift to me, my wife Joan.  That’s where I really understand all that I’m saying here about Jesus shining through a person.  We’ve been living an incredible journey with our marriage and with our family--at times gratifying, at times scary.  Considering all those adventures and misadventures of our kids, especially our foster kids, we sure didn’t know what was ahead of us as we started our journey together.  But we have made it this far, still in love--no, really, more in love and greatly enriched by our presence to one another.  And indeed our Lord has been there as our encouragement and he’s been there as the one to challenge us to keep positive and keep optimistic.  For whatever light we have to give has been enhanced by that same Jesus.

We also have an excellent exhortation in our passage from Isaiah that tells us how to get through life with its good and its bad and still be light to the world.  As he says, “Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless, clothe the naked when you see them and do not turn your back on your own.  Then your light shall break forth like the dawn and your wound shall quickly be healed.”  

In the same vane, just last century, Dr. Carl Menninger, a famous psychiatrist once gave a lecture on mental health. Afterwards, he answered some questions from the audience.  This one man asked him, “What if a person felt that a nervous breakdown was coming on, what should he do?”  Most people expected him to reply, “Well, consult a psychiatrist.”  But to their astonishment he said, “Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks and find someone in need and do something to help that person.”  So, Isaiah’s words 600 years before Christ find a resonance 1900 years after Christ.  Things haven’t changed.  Dr. Menninger is saying the same thing Isaiah is saying.  Indeed, we need to show our actions and our connectiveness to God in order to be healed ourselves.  It turns out that those that we are ministering to have the power in turn to minister to us and more importantly to bring a healing in us that we need.  This is God’s plan for each of us to be connected not only to God but to each other.  That ultimately is what being the light of the world means. 

May God bless us all.