As we advance through Matthew’s Gospel from
Sunday to Sunday, we note that the Lord Jesus identifies his disciples ever
more tightly with himself, with his mission. Whatever the Son is by nature, this the
adopted children of the common Father must also become by grace and rebirth in
the eternal Word. And whatever he, the Master, does, that too his servants are
to do. This, and nothing else, is the essence of both salvation in Christ and
mystical union with God. Last week, in the Beatitudes, Jesus revealed to us the
sacred laws that govern his own divine Heart and define the being of the
eternal Son: namely, poverty of spirit, meekness, compassion, hunger for
justice, mercy, purity of heart, peace-mindedness, readiness to suffer for the
Truth… And today the same Person who elsewhere
affirms I am the light of the world (Jn 8:12) jolts his disciples with the
declaration: You are the light of the world. What a mind-boggling equivalency
Jesus establishes between his I and our we! It seems we are to be … him! What an utterly simple and yet overwhelming
way to manifest the sublimity of the Christian vocation!
The poor fishermen
listening to Jesus must have been astounded to hear themselves referred to in
terms that stretched out their significance to truly cosmic proportions. YOU are the light of the world: Christians,
according to the Lord here, are not only to be ‘virtuous’ in a general sense;
they are to be the salt of the whole
earth, that is, they are to intensify the ‘flavor’ of every human activity,
and, by their presence and influence, transform the world’s quality from
mediocre to extraordinary. What is of itself insipid can become delightful and
even thrilling if seasoned with joy and devotion. What would be irretrievably
lost to the passage of time and decay can be preserved full-flavored unto
eternity in the Lord Jesus by the salt of Christian memory. But how can I be
salt and light in the life of those around me? How can I season their distress
and hopelessness and thus whet their appetite for the great adventure of grace?
The Prophet Isaiah spells it out in no uncertain terms in our first reading: 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 flesh. Then your light shall break forth like the
dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed. How amazingly
counter-intuitive: we are healed by our healing others!
Jesus also says: If salt loses its taste, it is no longer
good for anything but to be thrown out. Nothing can substitute for salt. (I
hate so-called ‘salt substitutes’!) Insipid Christians, those who have lost
their proper Christ-flavor, have also forgotten their function as the condiment
of humanity, and have in fact forgotten the sacred salt placed on their tongues
at their Baptism. No doubt they have allowed this to happen by too timidly blending
into the surrounding environment, perhaps out of exhaustion, perhaps out of
fear of introducing a jarring note, a sharp, pungent flavor, or too intense a
beam of light, into the humdrum rhythms of shared human existence, as if Christ
had not sent them to do just that. Salt and light each imparts its own virtue,
provided they remain fully what they are, just as a monk can mightily enhance
the quality of all human life provided he remains faithful to the uniqueness of
his vocation, albeit in the hiddenness proper to the ‘ordinary, obscure and
laborious’ Cistercian way.
‘What the soul is to its body, that Christians
are to the world’, states the ancient Letter
to Diognetus. But do we not too often—even while thinking of ourselves as
devoted Christians—want to be the receivers
rather than the givers of salt and
light, and do we not in this way become insipid and dark, and thus frustrate
the divine design of salvation? Do we not habitually forget that the secret of
Christ-like spiritual vitality is to give
the embrace we ourselves long to receive?
Christ’s disciples are themselves responsible if the world around them crouches
in lethargy, woefully unredeemed. Admittedly, the disciples’ assigned task (Be
salt! Be light!) appears daunting in the extreme. And yet, along with his command that we should be salt and light,
Jesus has already given us the means
to fulfill it. For Christ has communicated to us his own substance—the salt and
light of divinity enfleshed in his human nature—and these gifts ‘turn’ and
become corrupt if they are not generously consumed and communicated by us, like
the manna in the desert: ‘Let no one leave any of it over till the morning,’ [Moses
commanded]. But they did not
listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and
stank (Ex 16:19-20). We
cannot ‘save up’ Jesus for ourselves, against a rainy day. We are given Jesus
in order that we should give him away. That
is the only efficient way of keeping him!
Jesus exhorts us: Let your light shine before others. The
good works of Christians are the beams of light that manifest to all the
goodness their Father has poured into them. The Father cannot be seen, for he
dwells in heaven. Therefore, the visible presence and behavior of Christians
ought to re-present (that is, ‘make
present again’) the majesty and goodness and glory of God. We might say that
God hides his glory in order that it might shine out through us. This is precisely why Christians can at times be such a
source of scandal. Everyone knows what Christ has made us to be by uniting us
to himself. Our infidelity to his call that we be lamps shedding our light to all in the household is the reason
for the darkness of the world. Christians must follow the surprising logic of
the Hassidic rabbi Moshe Loeb, who taught this: ‘When someone comes to you and
asks for help, you must not say to him with a pious mouth, “Have trust and cast
your care on God!” What you must do is act
as if God did not exist, as if in the whole world there were only one
person who could help the man standing in front of you: and that person is you
and you alone!’
Jesus says: People do not light a lamp and put it under a bushel
basket, but on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. The word for ‘lamp’ used here in
Greek (lykhnos) more precisely means
a ‘portable lamp’, and this makes the saying all the more poignant. It hints
that we are a lamp in the hand of God,
a light that must allow itself to be moved about by Christ as he sees fit.
Because it is Christ who has kindled his light in us, Christians will also
allow their Lord to choose the particular lampstand from which they will shine,
and how, and when. And let us not forget in this connection that, when the
Father kindled his beloved Son as the light of this world, he placed him on the lampstand of the Cross high on
Golgotha Hill, where Jesus could shine the brightest. Remember that Jesus once
exclaimed: I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were
already kindled! (Lk 12:49) How
often do we, his disciples, pray for that same fire to be kindled in us?
The whole purpose of
Christians letting their light shine before the world is that all may see the light of their good works and so, says Jesus, glorify your Father. Seeing the light of
goodness shine forth from poor creatures like ourselves leads to the astounded glorification
of God. The light that flows from a Christian’s presence should manifest God’s redeeming
glory and induce people to return that glory to God in praise. Because Baptism,
Confirmation, and the Eucharist have impressed the living form of Christ upon our
lives, we Christians have been made to be the
visibility of God’s glory and compassion in this world.
God’s splendor and beauty
are, of course, continually streaming forth in his creatures on every side; yet
these are but distant reflections, in creation, of the divine qualities of eternal
wisdom, harmony, beauty, and power. But we Christians—human beings who have put
on by grace the dynamic form of Christ—are called to do what even the sun and
the moon in all their splendor cannot do: to manifest the personal glory of God as only persons can; that is, his unfathomable
mystery as intimate lover of mankind,
as faithful friend, as ardent companion, and as selfless redeemer. We may be made from the clay
of the earth, but, by God’s compassion, we are also filled to the brim with
God’s life-quickening Breath. What have we come here to receive yet again on
this Sunday morning from this sacred altar if it is not Christ’s burning and
transforming Spirit? Yes, we are
re-created at every Eucharist, if we would but open our mouths wide to inhale
God’s revitalizing Breath.
Sunday Homily by Father Simeon.
