Light is a dominant theme in today’s readings, linked with healing. We all have that experience ourselves: wounds heal better when exposed to sunlight. So in the first reading from Isaiah, God encourages us to care for the needy: "Then will your light shine like the dawn, and your wound will be quickly healed" Helping others heals us and takes us out of our own darkness into light. How many people have found that helping the needy frees them from their own angst and complications.
The theme continues in the psalm: "the good man is a light in darkness for the upright”;he lends, he gives to the poor; “his head will be raised in glory".There is something glorious, full of light, in helping others. Even in the first reading, St Paul insists that his teaching was not based on human philosophy, which so often can become dark and twisted, but only on "a demonstration of the power of the Spirit".In other words, with the light of God, not the obscurity of merely human thought.
In the gospel Jesus puts salt and light together. Salt had a double function in the ancient world. Not only did it add taste to food, as it still does today, but it also preserved from corruption at a time when there weren’t fridges and ice couldn’t be guaranteed – certainly not in Mediterranean countries. Jesus here is talking of our Christian witness: we must act in society like salt. Salt works discreetly, mixing with other spices: too much of it is unpleasant but too little makes the food bland.
Christians must act – discreetly but really – in the world both to give taste and preserve from corruption. If we don’t speak out and aren’t noticed, we become like salt which has lost its taste "and can only be thrown out to be trampled underfoot by men."This happens when we stay silent in the face of evil and corruption. We can’t necessarily end evil but we can at least denounce and limit it. We are ‘salted’ through prayer and study, through self-control and good use of time. This is the internal ‘salt’ of the action of God inside us.
And then we come to light. Christ calls us to be "the light of the world, a city built on a hill-top". The saints especially have been this light, "shining for everyone in the house" of the Church. This light again must be internal, the action of God in our souls which shines out to others. It is not the proud ostentation of the Pharisees seeking human praise. Rather, our goal is that people "seeing our good works, give the praise to the Father in heaven". When we witness witness to Christ through the excellence of our work and the love of God and neighbour which inspires it, when we stand up for our conscience even at the cost of great suffering, we are truly "the light of the world".
Homily on the readings of Sunday V in Ordinary Time (A)
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaA few minutes of reflection for this Sunday's readings.
