LIGHT IS ITS OWN PROOF AS SALT IN TASTE
Introduction
To show how great Elijah was as a prophet, the Elijah cycle in the book of Kings shows how he rewarded the widow by seeing to it that she did not suffer from the lack of food during the famine. Later he will restore her son to life.
During the communist regime in Poland, only a dozen or so Catholic secondary schools for girls remained under the direction of religious sisters. They had to follow the state program without any religion. When asked whether there was still any sense in their work, a sister directress answered: “We stay with the girls, we are a presence among them. If we try to be good Christians, we automatically let the light shine. Light is its own proof. One has not to talk about it.” Her words echo those of Christ in the gospel. A Christian has not necessarily to preach from a pulpit. Authentic Christian living is a proclamation all by itself.
1 Reading 1 Kings 17:7-16
The brook near where Elijah was hiding ran dry,.
Responsorial Psalm 4:2-3, 4-5, 7b-8
R. (7a) Lord, let your face shine on us.
Gospel Matthew 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 lampstand,
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.”
Commentary:
If we are ever at rights with God it is not because of anything we have done, but because of God’s goodness and mercy. Success stories are nearly always riddled with ambiguity and hidden compromise; they are the ego’s work. The only success story that holds any interest for us is that of Jesus—and he was a failure! On the level of ordinary wisdom, yes, he failed. “He saved others but he cannot save himself,” the onlookers said as he died: the three gospels record it (Mt 27:42; Mk 15:31; Lk 23:35). This tremendous failure is the revelation of God in human terms. And (to quote Tugwell again) “we who are followers of Jesus Christ are called to be imitators of him, and so should not be at all surprised to find that one of the arts we have to learn is the sublime art of weakness.”
“When I am weak then I am strong,” wrote St. Paul (2Cor 12:10). It is fatal (for oneself and for others) to have the wrong kind of strength. “The strong are always the same,” wrote Hemingway, “they face the truth with a bull-whip.” Such people will never be the “salt of the earth”; they may well set the world on fire, but they will never be “the light of the world.”
Blessing
“I am the light of the world,” said Christ, and he says of us too: you are, you must be, the light of the world. Let your faith show in your good works that shine and inspire, with the blessing of almighty God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen!