5th Sunday Year A - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2011 

Today’s Gospel takes up from last week’s Beatitudes and provides context for the rest of the Sermon on the Mount that will follow.  

It picks up a theme from the prophet Isaiah.  As we heard in today’s First Reading, Isaiah had spelt out a destiny for the exiles recently returned to their homeland from Babylon.  They were to have a universal role, a responsibility to the rest of the world.  To the extent that they learnt to live justly, they were to be a light rising in the midst of the world’s darkness.  Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the homeless poor; clothe the one you see to be naked.. Then will your light shine like the dawn…

Against this rich background, Jesus now said to his disciples: You are the light of the world.  Like Isaiah, Jesus was not speaking simply to individual disciples.  Isaiah addressed the nation.  Jesus had in mind the Christian community.

What the world needs is not simply good individuals.  The world needs to see communities of people who can live together, not threatened by difference, who can profoundly respect each other in their difference and search together for truth and justice.  That is the witness that the world needs.  That is what gives hope.  It is much too easy for individuals to do their own thing, even to do their bit for God.  It is harder to live together in respect and love, and to act on shared goals, arrived at by consensus.

That, to me, is the Church’s challenge.  That is the challenge facing our parishes.  I don’t think that it the parish’s work simply to encourage and to support members to be upright individuals.  The parish’s challenge is to become a genuine community, where people care for each other, listen to each other … more that that, search together to find ways together to be salt of the earth and light to the world.  We are not used to thinking this way.

From my vantage point outside the circle, I find it encouraging to see how this parish community has chosen, in a very concrete way, by putting its money where its mouth is, to give priority to community building.  You have chosen to finance two very competent people and given them the clearly pastoral task, with the parish priest, to develop and to empower the community.

It is not enough, of course, for the parish to finance them.  Everyone needs to think beyond personal interests and to move beyond individual comfort zones – to work and to grow – together.  Church, parish, is not just good individuals, but lively community.  Then it becomes truly a light to the world.