5th.
Sunday of the Year (A)
(Isaiah 58:7-10; 1st.
Corinthians 2:1-5; Matthew 5:13-16.)
My
dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if you take your mind back to that first
reading from the prophet Isaiah you will recall the words:
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.
In
that reading a healing is being referred to: God healing us from the wound of
sin and the sore of pride, and we are told that by His help men will recover,
and their recovery will be backed up subsequently by the glory of the Lord supporting
them. All that will be God’s GIFT, thanks
to His saving mercy. God’s healing is
not like the work of some picture restorer, cleaning away the grime of ages and
revealing the original beauty of some painting in all its integrity; His restoring work is the gift of eternal life
in Jesus by the Spirit, something previously only foreshadowed for Adam and Eve
before being irrevocably lost by our forebears’ sin.
Then
your light shall break forth like the dawn, your wound shall quickly be
healed. Your vindication shall go before
you and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
This
healing of the wound of sin and the sore of pride thanks to God’s merciful gift
to us in Jesus, this abiding and sure protection given by His glory which follows
us, results from the gift of eternal life and is the source and the shield of
our earthly “righteousness” that makes us “the salt of the earth”, and “the
light of the world”. And this our Gifted-Light,
must shine in the sight of men, not as a witness to our personal integrity, but
-- as Jesus said -- to “glorify your Father in heaven”, and thus will we become
living members of Him Who summed up His whole life in the words:
(Father)
I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have
given Me to do (John 17:4),
of
Him Who wanted even His act of dying on the Cross to serve the same end (Jn
17:1):
Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son,
that Your Son also may glorify You.
And
so, in order to fulfil our vocation as members of that beloved Son, we have to
recognise that we are special, not of ourselves but by God’s gift to us in
Jesus, and we have to remain special, because we have a work to do with Jesus
for the Father:
You
are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavour, how shall it be
seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled
underfoot by men.
Our
realising that “righteousness” is the gift of God thus becomes tantamount to awareness
of our “responsibility”: we cannot allow our life in Christ to become tasteless
by adopting behaviour that belongs to the world, where “my personal and
professional integrity” are held in high esteem and the humility of Christian
righteousness is contemned.
If
we look more closely at Jesus’ choice of words to describe His disciples: ‘salt
of the earth’ and ‘light of the world’ we will understand that both ‘salt’ and
‘light’ are self-less words, so to speak: salt in the ancient world being
widely used to preserve food items, and even today to give ‘taste’ to food; of
itself salt is relatively nothing.
Likewise, light serves to illuminate whatever is there to be seen by us;
and again, of itself, apart from the things it illuminates, light is not of any
personal use. It is that self-less
character which Jesus would like to see in His disciples, and which was well
exemplified in the first two readings, where Isaiah advised:
If
you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; then
light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for
you like midday;
and
St. Paul told his readers and converts that he had deliberately sought to centre
their faith in God by affirming the essential importance of Jesus sent by God, and
making himself and his own preaching as unpretentious as possible:
When
I came to you, brothers, proclaiming the mystery of God, I did not come with
sublimity of words or of wisdom, my message and my proclamation were not with
persuasive (words of) wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so
that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
Paul,
‘salt of the earth’ sought to ‘preserve’ his converts by proclaiming and
glorifying not himself but Jesus, for God.
One
of the characteristics of some modern, self-styled religious people is that
they look to get something out of religion for themselves here and now. They usually want to hear and experience something
new, preferably indeed, something mysterious and oriental, that will, hopefully,
free them from the weariness of what they have long been aware of in our
Western society yet have never known or experienced; they want to feel the
power and excitement of being swept along by charged communal emotions or the bliss
of being surrounded and lulled by a scented and gently swirling fog of mystery. Such people are centred on their own earthly,
supposedly-spiritual, feelings and experiences, and they end up finding Christianity,
which speaks of a transcendent God, quite boring; especially, indeed, when the Christian
message is proclaimed with clarity to their minds, whereas they want to have their
emotions strongly stirred and clamouring but with their minds left relatively -- that
is comfortably and peacefully -- disengaged.
The
apostle Paul said that He preached the mystery of God in such a way that his convert’s
faith should rest, not on the wisdom or cleverness of men who can speak words almost
salacious in their ability to delight and sway the hearts of those who hear
them, but on the power of God. And
there, you might think, there is something that needs explaining, for displays
of Godly power are, surely, just what many of us Catholic and Christian people rejoice
to hear of and perhaps want to see and experience?
Yes,
that is indeed the case. But the power
of God of which St. Paul speaks is never displayed:
it is, indeed, sometimes exercised for the encouragement and benefit of people
in particular circumstances hearing the testimony of God for the first time, or,
striving to live according to His teaching.
However, God's exercise of power on such occasions and for such people
is not a display of spiritual fireworks to make all who witness it gape, but
rather a rare and extraordinary visible manifestation of what is God’s
continuous invisible battle through the Church and by His Spirit for the
minds and hearts of men and women of all times and all cultures against the abusive
and tyrannical rule of Satan; and there is no power other than that normally unseen
power of God’s grace in Jesus and the Church that can rescue mankind from their
fallen, sinful, state. Today, in our
affluent, sinful and adulterous society, we see the awful consequences arising for
ordinary individuals when society as a whole acquiesces under the power of
Satan and opts for the wages of sin, with the result that ever more and more
disgusting and degrading exuberances of evil appear in our midst, and against which
the miserable fig-leaves of human self-righteousness and the ‘rule of law’ are
powerless to control, let alone redress.
People
of God, Christians and above all Catholics have to try to be salt of the earth
and light of the world. Salt was used,
as I said, in the ancient world to preserve food from corruption; and those disciples
of Jesus who do not resist the corruption of evil, have become like
tasteless salt, as Jesus Himself said:
Good
for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
Likewise,
light is meant to show people the way, to lead them in the right direction;
Catholics who do not, in any way, lead along that way, but rather only
and always follow in the wake of the world, whose consistent excuse is that 'what
everyone else is doing can't be that bad', are not true Catholics, not
authentic disciples of Jesus, at all.
And yet so many formerly nominal Catholic people today do not fight
against moral corruption, allowing themselves to positively delight in ‘their
own eggs’ -- the pleasures of darkness and self-esteem – people, that is, who
turn most deliberately from the light and follow the pagan majority into
fornication, divorce, adultery, contraception and, above all, into abortion; they
steal, they malign, and they lie. Some
even do such things and then consummate their sin by receiving the Eucharist
without contrition, without confession, but with oodles of piteous self-deceit
or disgusting hypocrisy and pseudo ‘personal integrity’.
People
of God, be simple and sincere in all your dealings, and do not fail to be
quietly but totally confident in Jesus’ promise that, because you are humbly trying
to be His true disciples, you are the salt of the earth and the light of
the world, and all the witness that you bear for Jesus will bring forth fruit in
His good time that is both ‘pleasant and desirable’ for God’s people. Do not be eaten up with concern for yourself
and your standing among men, but rather -- trying to be true to Jesus and His
teaching in Mother Church -- trust in God and give Him a free hand to take
care of you, for He is the unfailing Shepherd of His flock. In that way the prophecy of Isaiah will be
verified in you and for you:
Your
light shall break forth like the dawn, 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.'
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