2011

1ST READING: ISAIAH 58:7-10
2ND READING 1 COR 2:1-5
GOSPEL MATTHEW 5: 13-16

We are the “light to the world”. These words were spoken by President Obama in the “State of the Union” address just this past month. But what was his point? President Obama was saying that the United States with its democratic society, is an example for the world: That through a democratic way of life, freedom is obtained.
This way of life still has its problems, but it is the best thing going.

In today’s scripture we here Jesus speaking the words, “You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world”, and he spoke them over 2000 years ago, words that grasp not only the imagination but the heart of many believers. President Obama is calling on a nation, Jesus is calling on the world. But what does all this mean, especially in the Churches Ordinary time?

It seems as though we have been on a world-wind tour of life, moving so fast through the Advent and Christmas seasons landing into Ordinary Time. And even now, we are starting to look ahead at the Lent and Easter Seasons just a few weeks away only to end up again in Ordinary Time.

We are now in the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time. So what does Ordinary Time mean? The more I read and the more I reflect, the more I see the wisdom of our tradition. Ordinary Time are the days in the Church year that are not in Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter. The longest part of the Church year, Ordinary Time, is so called not because it is set apart from the extraordinary times , but it is time ordered for, or ordained to, the every day living of a Christian life. This is clearer in the Latin title, “tempus ordinarium”, “measured time”.

Ordinary Time has two parts. The first is the 5 to 8 weeks between Epiphany and the beginning of Lent. The second is the twenty-three to twenty-seven weeks following the feast of Pentecost and concluding with the solemnity of Christ the King, the final Sunday of the Liturgical year. This doesn’t mean that Ordinary Time was nothing special however. Jesus performed miracles and ministered all year.

Can we be the salt of the earth that flavors this world with kindness, love, and peace? Can we be the light of the world showing the way to God in this so called Ordinary time? Yes, we can.

Our lives seem normal when everything around us and even our daily tasks become routine. Yet our lives have exceptional moments and seasons. There are births, baptisms, weddings, deaths. But these are certainly not life’s norms. There are highs and lows and in between all this, life is often a routine.

Life usually has a repeating rhythm, things that we do from day to day. We wake up, get that first cup of mountain grown coffee, or tall glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, maybe eat some breakfast, pop tarts or something quick I would imagine.

We walk out the door to catch the school bus, or jump in the car to go to work, there is laundry to do, grocery shopping that needs to be done, new shoes for the kids to buy, and just maybe a monthly manicure for the woman of the household that is long overdue. These are ordinary days when we do ordinary things.

When life throws at us soaring joys and deep sorrows, we tend to stop and reflect on our own life’s journeys. These great events, good or seemingly bad, and our reflection on them, are graced moments if we look hard enough.

The same is true for the Church seasons. However, it is in Ordinary Time, the days that do not celebrate events in our salvation history that we, as God’s people, work out life’s meaning. We strive to be Christians in the ordinary events of our lives: in our blessings, our struggles, our temptations, our relationships, our broken-ness, and our never ending search for joy and happiness.

It is in ordinary times, in the normalcy of our lives that we strive to be the people God calls us to be. So how are we to become the “Salt of the earth” and the Light of the World” in this troubling day and age?

The scripture readings today are very direct in the answer to this question. Isaiah tells us that the Lord cares about how we treat others. The Lord calls us to do the works of mercy: to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and to look after our family and friends.

We are called not only to care for others. Isaiah tells us that the journey to God begins with ourselves. We must rid ourselves of sin and its tendencies: gossip, jealousy, envy, pride, greed and much more.

Today’s gospel passage from Matthew shares this same theme of Isaiah’s. Jesus reminds us that, as God’s children, we are the “Light of the world”, we are the “Salt of the earth”. We matter. We are partners in God’s plan. God invites us to care, that we notice, and that we believe that we can be an instrument of God’s goodness to others.

And that is why we gather here week after week. We gather around the Altar of the lord so that the body and blood of Jesus Christ can feed us. This Eucharist is the source of the grace that gives the courage we need to be God’s people; God’s people who, in ordinary times of our lives, in our interactions with our spouses, our children, our parents, our neighbors and the strangers in the store, on the bus, in the chair next to you, have a mandate to be the “light of the world”.

Our spiritual lives are very parallel to our human lives. It is like a flashlight. When the battery starts to lose its charge, the light begins to dim until suddenly only darkness. Put in a recharged battery and, guess what, LIGHT!!!

It is the same with us. How can we expect to be the “Salt of the earth and the “Light of the world” if we do not recharge our inner selves. God has taken care of that. We are recharged every Sunday when we come to this place called God’s house, to gain the strength and grace to do what he wants us to do, coming together as his children, as Christ’s body, to receive his son in us.

This Eucharist, the greatest gift of love from God, gives us that inner peace, that inner strength, that inner light, to guide us along our way becoming the “Salt of the earth” and the “Light of the world”.

We will all struggle along the way and by the end of each week we will need that boost, that recharge for the coming weeks challenges. That is why it is so important to gather here each Sunday.

Sisters and Brothers:
As we receive this greatest of sacraments, may this Eucharist, which brings salt and light to us, enable us to move closer and closer to Jesus, becoming his hands and feet in a world that needs the good taste of the Father’s love and to bring the Light of Salvation to others even in this Ordinary Time.

Some years ago New York magazine listed outstanding New Yorkers. Only one Catholic was mentioned, Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement. For fifty years, she practiced the Beatitudes daily in her House of Hospitality in New York City. She fed, clothed, and housed the poor. She practiced the Beatitudes so well that secular editors saluted her. She was our “tainted nature’s solitary boast.” Why weren’t there more Catholic New Yorkers on the list? After all, there are over a million Catholics in New York City.

Dorothy Day understood something about the beatitudes that many of us don’t. This wasn’t intended to be a “feel good” litany. Meant to challenge our basic values, the beatitudes sum up what our attitudes ought to be here and now if we want to be blessed by God. The Beatitudes are the owner’s manual Jesus gave to each of us at Baptism for living the Christian life. Blessed are they who, like Dorothy Day, realize what Jesus is promising his followers can be experienced in this lifetime, provided we abide by his teachings.

The beatitudes can be seen as many slices of one brilliant diamond. Jesus could have added or subtracted one of them and still the total message would be the same. He gave us the Beatitudes not to increase our knowledge but to change our lives. They express ideal conclusions for courageous behavior.

Undoubtedly, those who first heard Jesus speak these words were surprised. In biblical times, the good Jew attained holiness by diligently following 613 man made laws that elaborated the Ten Commandments. Ignoring any of them rendered you a sinner in the eyes of others. This sort of high expectation put holiness out of reach for the ordinary Jew. Jesus turned things around, asserting that simply following laws is not enough to please God. He expressed the beatitudes not as commands, but as pathways to holiness that anyone could travel.

Jesus wasn’t the first to enunciate these principles. Cicero, who died in 43 BC, penned, “There is nothing that makes a man more like God than mercy.” The root meaning of mercy is to give compassionate care to others, even when they have done nothing to deserve it.

The spinal cord of the Beatitudes is love; our love of God as well as belief in His love for us. But the Beatitudes, as Dorothy Day so ably demonstrated, also include love of neighbor. Important too is love of one’s self. It is difficult and perhaps impossible to love others if we dislike ourselves.

With the Beatitudes, the modus operandi for being a Christian evolved to a new level. We are being asked to help others even though they may not deserve it. We are being invited to be generous with money even though we have mortgage payments and bills to pay. I believe it was Arthur Ashe, the tennis star, who once said, “From what we get, we make a living. From what we give we make a life.”

Why was Dorothy Day a modern day saint? She was cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful, patient when difficult to be patient, pushed on when she wanted to stand still, kept silent when she wanted to talk, and stayed agreeable when she wanted to be disagreeable.

The requisite for sainthood was quite simple and always will be.
Saints are those who see and act on what they see. They see with the eyes of Christ. They see what is important, what matters, what takes priority and hints at the divine. They grasp the message of the Beatitudes and live by them accordingly.

Jesus began by saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The remaining eight Beatitudes are really echoes of this primary one. Those who “mourn” are those who dare to become vulnerable through loving…and thereby find the secret of happiness. The “meek” renounce power and violence as a means of acquiring happiness…and thus are candidates for true happiness. Those who “hunger for justice” have a passion for the reforms that will enable everyone to live and dream. Those who are “merciful” renounce anger and vengeance as they offer forgiveness. The “clean of heart” are the sincere and truthful ones who reject all that is mere sham and pretense in life.

The “peacemakers” promote forgiveness and reconciliation as the only sure way to peace. And those who are “persecuted” are those who persevere as did Dorothy Day in the pursuit of these ideals in spite of ridicule from others who seem to be the wise and prudent ones. Thus, the Beatitudes represent a program for true holiness and happiness through the wisdom of the gospel rather than through the misguided wisdom of purely secular philosophy.

If you need courage to practice the Beatitudes, consider this advice from US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: “We are fools for Christ’s sake…We must pray for courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world. Jesus is greater than our greatest problem.”

To paraphrase the British author, GK Chesterton, one cannot argue that the Beatitudes have been tried and found wanting. Rather, they have been found hard and not tried. Try them and see for yourself that they indeed will make a difference in your life and your relationship with God.

Today’s readings begin with a line from Isaiah that is proclaimed at the Christmas Midnight Mass, “The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light, upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.” Few of us know the feeling of being in darkness, unable to move because we cannot see any light. I once experienced total darkness in an underground cave, where the absence of light left me feeling very much alone and hesitant to move.

There is certainly a great deal of darkness in our world. The headlines remind us of that reality constantly. In today’s Herald, I read a young teenager jumped to his death from an overpass in Lynnwood. A gunman in Everett recently wounded three bystanders outside a nightclub. A man in Arlington was arrested in connection to a fatal stabbing two weeks ago.

Had there been a newspaper in Capernaum 2000 years ago, Jesus may have read similar headlines. Darkness existed then as well. Isaiah described this region near the Sea of Galilee as the district of the Gentiles. Their irreligious ways evidently had a major influence on the Jews who lived there, allowing them to grow distant from God and the celebration of their faith; hence they are described as people living in darkness.

Jesus began his ministry with the message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Repent has several meanings. Among them is to feel remorse, but repent means more than simply feeling sorry for one’s sins. Repent also means to “make a change for the better as a result of remorse for one’s sins.” If we want to experience the kingdom of heaven, then we must practice the art of repenting. We must make a change for the better in our lives. So long as we live with the status quo, unwilling to change for the better, the kingdom of heaven cannot be experienced.

Granted, change doesn’t come easy. Jesus knew that and he spent three years wandering the hillside of Galilee and the streets of Jerusalem proclaiming that change can happen if one would take to heart the good news of his preaching. He served as a light to people in darkness and once they were freed from the darkness of sin, they served as a light to others.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta once visited a man who literally lived in darkness. His room was filthy and dirty. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling. There was no light in the room and he rarely opened the curtains. The condition of the room reflected the sad state of the man’s mental and spiritual condition. He was living in despair and gloom, convinced that no one cared about him.

She began to clean his room despite his many protests to leave him alone. Beneath one pile of rags and trash, she found a dusty, grimy looking oil lamp. After much polishing, Mother Teresa asked him why he never lit the lamp.

“Why should I? I don’t need it for myself. I have become used to living in the darkness…and no one ever comes to see me.”
“Will you promise to light it if one of my sisters comes to see you?” she asked. He replied, “Yes, if I hear a human voice, I will light the lamp.”

One of Mother Teresa’s nuns began to regularly visit the man. No longer was he living in darkness, literally and spiritually. His life was now brightened by the oil lamp and the light of hope and love which had been lit in his darkened heart, all because one person cared about him.

One day he said to the nun visiting him, “Sister, I am ok now. From now on, I’ll be able to manage on my own. But do me a favor. Tell that first sister who came to see me that the light she lit in my life is still burning.”
What a lovely thought! “The light she lit in my life is still burning.” Imagine how many lives would be different had someone lit the hearts of those whose actions harm themselves and others. Imagine how different our lives would be if the millions who had been aborted in our country had been allowed to see the light of day and someone’s love. Imagine how different your life would have been had your heart not been lit by the message of Jesus.

The word, repent, is so important that it is actually the first word Jesus speaks when he begins his public ministry. He is calling us to a change of heart, to take on a new way of thinking and living.

In addition to wondering how we ought to repent, some of us may be thinking, “What should we do?” For starters, do what you can to dispel the darkness of sin. Pray to resist the urge to sin. Do that which adds to the light of the world, not that which is just part of its darkness. No matter how much any moral decision might cost us, we will always be happy with ourselves when our choices are determined by the light of the Lord.

We have been enlightened by Christ and his teachings but some times we ignore him when it comes to choosing how to handle a given situation we find ourselves in. When we base our decision on the values of our faith rather than the values of an irreligious society, than we are doing what we can to bring His light to others. Granted, the temptation is always lurking to sin but anytime we do, we hinder ourselves from experiencing the kingdom of heaven.

Like the apostles, we have been called to enlighten the world. If we live in the light of Christ, we will bring his light to others. In closing, I offer this maxim from Mother Teresa, “Love Jesus, live with Jesus, and you will live for Jesus.”

For Christmas, my sister-in-law gave me a copy of Doonesbury at 40. This cartoon strip, started by Gary Trudeau when he was a student at Yale, has reflected the political and social milestones of Joanie, Mike, Duke, BD and Zonker and their children over the past 4 decades. In a recent interview, Trudeau said that the unique visual style and voice of Doonesbury began in a drawing class he took, expecting an easy A. “I was pretty happy with the drawings I was doing in class, and yet they were sort of the visual equivalent of Muzak…they were sort of charcoal stylings and they were very facile.

“And one day the professor came over and looked at my drawing, and he ripped it off my drawing board and proceeded to tear it into pieces in front of the rest of the class. And he looked at me and said, ‘Yes, I know you can draw. What I’d really like to know is whether you can see.'”

Any fan of Doonesbury would agree that Gary Trudeau learned his lesson that day; he went on to really see what is going on to the people and things around him. That is the challenge which John the Baptist leaves us with in today’s gospel. Can we see what he means when he tells us to behold the Lamb of God?

Twice in today’s gospel, John the Baptist makes the point that for much of his life, he did not know who Jesus really was. That’s a surprising admission when we consider that he and Jesus were cousins born only six months apart.

Most of us, like John the Baptist, have known Jesus since childhood. We have seen pictures of Jesus, we learned about him from our parents and in religion classes. We listened to his stories told in scripture and explained in homilies. For many of us, Jesus remains a kind person whose birth we celebrate at Christmas and whose resurrection we celebrate at Easter. But do we see him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world?

One of my seminary professors, Fr. Kilian McDonnell observed, “No man will celebrate the mystery of Christ in joy if he does not first recognize in sorrow that he is a sinner who needs a savior.”

Few of us have been blest with a vision like the one John the Baptist saw after he baptized his cousin in the Jordan River. However, we have dealt with the blinders that impede us from fully seeing God, namely the reality of sin in our lives. Looking at recent headlines, such as the massacre that occurred in Tucson last Saturday, we cannot deny that sin is very much a part of our human nature but do we see sin as the primary reason why Jesus is in our midst?

Can we see that God is calling us to be holy people in the midst of such violence? Can we see that God wants his salvation to reach to the ends of the earth? Can we see that whatever anger and hostility we cling to undermines the mission of the Lamb of God? We become holy when we see that we are sinners in need of God’s mercy, which is why before receiving communion, we implore, “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.”

When we say that, we are remembering what Jesus did for us on the cross, empowering us to forgive others just as he forgives us. We see that his sacrifice makes God’s love real on earth and we see that joining Jesus in sacrificial love is the only way we can be his followers and do what we can to take away the sin of the world.

Just as Gary Trudeau’s teacher challenged him to see, John the Baptist is challenging us to see the Lamb of God in our midst, to see and hear the compassion of God in our lives, to uncover and lift up God’s grace that goes largely unnoticed in the simplest acts of forgiveness and justice. We often find ourselves rushing through the day too busy to see the love of God illuminating even our darkest nights.

Last week in Tucson, President Obama used the moment to invite us to see that reality in the midst of tragedy. He said, “I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us. That’s what I believe, in part because that’s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed. I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us, we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.”

However imperfect we are, we have to keep our hearts and eyes open so that we will see who Jesus has been all along. We can see him as our Savior, the Lamb of God who takes away our sins, inviting us by our example to make a difference in the lives of those around us, helping to create the country we want our children to inherit.

There is nothing greater that any of us can do in our lives than point Christ out to others. May we see this new year with new eyes, enabling us to transform the Jordans we cross into flowing rivers of God’s reconciliation and justice.

A century ago, a young woman named Agnes was born in Eastern Europe. On the feast of Epiphany in 1929 at age 18, she arrived by train in the capital city of Bengal in British India. This bright young nun spent the next 20 years teaching geography in a boarding school.

In 1949, she felt a powerful call from God to spend her life serving the dying and the poorest of the poor. She asked the local bishop for permission to set up a religious order devoted to this ministry. At first, he scoffed at the idea but eventually he agreed to her request.

Until her death in 1997, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta treated over 50,000 dying people. Her order, the Missionaries of Charity, now work in more than 60 countries around the world. Fifty years after stepping off the train in Calcutta, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No wonder the world came to a standstill when she died. She was a true saint for our times, a living example of what this feast is all about: revealing God’s love to all peoples.

Filled with much folklore, the true meaning of Epiphany may not be so apparent. We envision three wise men following a star across a barren desert, bringing gifts for the new born king of the Jews. Actually, we know little about this event. Matthew does not tell us the names of the wise men, how many there were, or even where they came from, but that doesn’t matter. What does is that God revealed his son, Jesus, to them so that peoples of all nations could experience God’s divine love.

For this reason, the story of the Magi was more significant than Christmas to non-Jewish Christians in the early Church. Until the birth of Jesus, God had revealed himself and his love only through signs and prophets to the people of Israel. At Christmas, God was revealed in the person of Jesus to the Jews and with the visit of the Magi, God was now revealed to all peoples.

For Mother Teresa, the revelation of Epiphany was simple yet challenging. She once said, “Everyone is created by God and deserving of love. It does not matter if the person is male or female, Moslem or Christian or Jew. It does not matter the person’s race or nationality. All that matters is that the person is created by God and deserves love.”

Isaiah paints a magnificent image of the Jews returning to Jerusalem after their captivity in Babylon with all the nations joining in the pilgrimage. He envisions that the entire world will witness the glory of God but for this to happen, each person must cooperate in spreading that light to others. “Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you…Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance. Raise your eyes and look about; they all gather and come to you.” In other words, by our example, others will find God.

Throughout history, God’s revelation was a gradual process. The Jews were chosen to keep alive the belief in the one true God and the hope for the promised Messiah. When the time came, God also manifested himself to the Gentiles beginning with the Magi so that they could also share in the promise of redemption. As Paul points out, the news is out, all peoples are members of the same body; everyone has been chosen to receive the good news of God’s unconditional love.

This is an important message for us to hear today, when there is such racial, ethnic and religious intolerance, here and abroad. Simply put, all peoples are invited to rejoice in the glory of the Lord; the signs of God’s presence are revealed to all.

Perhaps, you probably know people who are deeply sensitive in a given area, for example, issues of social justice or the use of inclusive language or services to the poor. And yet these same people can at times be blithely insensitive in other ways, sharing ethnic jokes, for example, or stereotyping people on the basis of their ethnic origins.

The vision of Epiphany as phrased by Mother Teresa is simple, yet utterly profound. Everyone, from the newest baby of the year to the inmates on death row at Walla Walla is created by God and deserving of love. And how is God’s love manifested? Through you and me for we are expected to reveal God’s love to our neighbors. We are God’s hands and voices for making that love manifest in the lives of others. To quote Mother Teresa, “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do; but how much love we put into that action.”

Like the magi, we need to be open to God’s direction in our lives. Through prayer, we become open to the ways that God may be directing our lives. Like the magi, may we never hesitate to seek help along the way, especially when in doubt. By living out this Epiphany vision, we turn into “stars” to guide others to Christ.

The original gifts of Epiphany were, as you recall, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In biblical times, they were very precious and valuable. Only one gift matters and that gift is love. Today, we join the magi in worshipping Christ, our new born king. There is no better way for us to adore him than to follow the example of Blessed Mother Teresa by offering everyone love without distinction, without qualification, and without hesitation.