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Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 8th

In today’s gospel passage from Matthew, we once again hear Jesus pay us a great compliment, “you are the light of the world.” It doesn’t take a lot of wisdom and insight to know that Jesus is telling us that we are to have a big impact on life around us just as the light bulb does, or some other source of artificial lighting. That “life around us” being people we are in touch with everyday, family, friends, or strangers, and also the environment in which we live … the home, the classroom, the workplace, the marketplace, the neighborhood, the community.
Ever since the discovering of fire the presence light has become essential to human living. In addition to warmth, the fire gave us light we could use any time of the day or night and anywhere in our world. We now have the light bulb and other means of producing artificial lighting. Though there is a long time between the prehistoric age and the modem age, there is one thing that is commonly shared between both, and all the centuries through time …. and that is simply this, somebody has to make the fire and somebody has to tum the light switch on, in order to produce light. If we don’t make the fire or turn on the switch, there’s no light. God has given us light and we have discovered how to make it present in our world. We have the power to “make light happen,” or to “not make light happen.”
That is what Jesus was saying when he told the people not to put the bushel basket over the lamp light. Light your lamp and let it work, for you and for all in the house. If He were alive today and repeating that same theme about light to the world, He would tell us to “tum on the switch! don’t turn it off!”
And to some extent that is what Isaiah was saying so long ago as recorded in the first reading for this weekend and proclaimed to us. He is telling us to bring light to people who are helpless and vulnerable … and don’t stop; and he gives a very thorough list of who the vulnerable are in his book, chapter 58:7-10. Matthew pretty much repeats the same theme in his gospel account, chapter 25: 35-39, where he describes people who tum on the light and those who tum it off.
We do have the power to bring light into this world, especially the little world of our home place and neighborhood and school, simply by turning the switch on. -Msgr. Greg