5th Sunday Year A - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2014

I would not be surprised if most of you knew today’s Gospel almost by heart. But, if you are like me, as you listened to me reading it, did you really hear it? Perhaps, better, Did you really hear him? Did you hear Jesus saying it to you, today? You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.

The passage comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Back then, he was talking to his disciples and to the crowds. He was sharing his vision of what could be, what our world could be, what you and I could be. In fact, what you and I would need to be if the world is ever to become what it could be. Jesus was wonderfully hopeful. He had a dream, a dream of a different, wonderful world, a world redeemed. But he knew it would never be without our wholehearted cooperation. He wanted so much to share his dream with us, to give us hope, not in ourselves but in God’s powerful, creative, redemptive love.

He wanted us, firstly, to get to know him, to become familiar with him; and from that familiar contact, to know our dignity and the dignity of every human person. He realised that getting the world on side would be a mammoth task. But it would be worth it, even though it would take time and would meet deeply entrenched inertia and fear of change. He would take the first steps. He would set things up and start the process. He would pay the price. But it would need the wholehearted cooperation of anyone who would listen, catch his enthusiasm, and have a go – with him.

He looked at his disciples. He looked at the crowd.  And he said to them, …You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world. No previous qualifications needed! You – just as you are – not all that special, and probably feeling busy enough already. All you need is to stay close, share the dream, feel the joy, have a go, make your inevitable mistakes, learn from them, start again, and leave outcomes to God.

I think that, when our Catholic sub-culture was pretty strong, probably up to the early 70s, the Church floated along; and we Catholics, by and large, were happy to be carried along for the ride. Perhaps we grew complacent, comfortably self-centered, focused on saving our souls [as though we could do that without the struggle to reach out in love to the world we lived in]. Things have changed; and people have either opted out or been forced to realise that the Church is us; and that 99.5% of that “us” is laity. Essentially the Church is laity – and always has been.

You are the Catholic community of Ballan. If Jesus is to get to work, practically, in Ballan, it will largely be through you – even though God’s Spirit breathes where it wills. Can you hear Jesus saying to you: You are the salt of the earth .. You are the light of the world.. ? He is saying it to you not just as isolated individuals but as believing community, needing each other, supporting each other, relying on each other, serving each other – not just for your own sakes but in order, with him, to make of our world a place more like what he yearns that it be.

Let me finish with a quotation from a recent statement of Pope Francis:

"… Let us recover and deepen our enthusiasm, that delightful and comforting joy of spreading the Good News, even when it is in tears that we must sow… And may the world of our time, which is searching, sometimes with anguish, sometimes with hope, be enabled to receive the good news not from messengers who are dejected, discouraged, impatient or anxious, but from ministers of the Gospel whose lives glow with fervour, who have first received the joy of Christ."