5 February 2023
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
When you were baptized, the minister lit a candle off of the Paschal Candle and handed it to one of your godparents, saying, “Receive the Light of Christ…” This is to remind us precisely of this Gospel passage: you are the light of the world. But it is not a light that you produce all on your own, like a star does; rather you bear a light that comes from elsewhere, or are lit on fire by a flame from outside of yourself.
“I am the light of the world,” Jesus says (John 8:12): you are to bear that light, perhaps like a lantern, letting it shine through you from within you, or like a torch: utterly consumed by the flame, bearing it up to provide light all around you. In any case we have an obligation to “…shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” Why is the world the way it is? Why is it so dark? Why have so many come to believe there is no God, or do not make Him a priority? Because too often they have not met anyone who shines bright with the Light of Christ. Imagine if all the baptized, even for just an hour, chose to shine, to put all they had into living their baptismal call, into tossing aside the bushel basket, to being that city on a hill gleaming in the light of Heaven!
We may look about and feel intimidated by all the darkness we see around us, as though we were a dwindling match in a dark cave. But we must remember that the light we have been given is not a bit of flame clinging desperately to a bit of wick: we bear the Light of Christ, the Light that, “…shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” (John 1:5).