Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time ~ Homily

You are the Light of the World

Homily by Fr. Günther Kerkmann, SJ
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time at 12 Noon Mass
St. Ignatius Church, Tokyo
(Is 58: 7-1; 1 Cor 2:1-5 ; Mt 5: 13-16)

But our faith is not based on human wisdom. It is not based on a brilliant philosophy. Rather it is based on a person, on Jesus Christ and furthermore on the crucified Jesus Christ!

The cross, for the Jews is a blasphemy; for the Greeks, a stupidity, and for the Japanese, a lack of good taste! And for our modern generation it is the proof of the failure of the establishment and the narrow-minded rigidity of an institutionalized religion!

But for us, the believers, the message of the crucified Christ is the expression of God’s strength. It contains all of our hope for salvation.

Christ is the culmination point of our history of salvation, the Light of the World. In the Gospel of St. Mark, Christ himself is depicted as the Light of the World. This light has to be put on a stand in order to be seen, in order to reveal itself. And this “stand” is the cross and the resurrection.

In today’s gospel according to St. Matthew, this idea is more developed. We as torch-bearers of Christ have to give witness to this light, so that the dark world is ignited and gets some orientation of joy and hope.

Our role as light of the world should be modeled on the way Christ gave light to the world through his love for us which became concrete on the cross. We have to put our light on that “stand”, the cross, because any witness that is not inspired by love and readiness for personal sacrifice would mean that we do not let Christ’s light shine, but our own. We seek ourselves, we want to be great, we want to be admired by people. It is our own hunger for recognition. If we are not ready for personal sacrifice, if we wait for the applause of the world, if we are not ready to be ridiculed, to be despised, to be considered naïve, or plain dumb, then our witness becomes cheap propaganda or simple advertisement.

What is needed is love that simply wants to serve without waiting for appreciation or thanks. It is love that does

• Not seek to be consoled, but to console.
• Not to be understood, but to understand
• Not to be forgiven, but to forgive

Not to seek self-fulfillment, but to make the life of others more worth living, with a little more joy and hope.

Only with such a love may we succeed in giving people back the dignity that they are entitled to.

Only such a love may make this world more humane.

Only such a love can be a convincing sign of God’s love for us.

Story:

When I was 5 years old, my mother brought me to the kindergarten. Before we entered the kindergarten, we stopped at the church. My mother explained that this was the House of God, a place of prayer and so on. But I was not interested in what she said. I was only interested in the stained glass windows. So I asked, “Mom, what is that? She looked at the window I had pointed to and said, “Oh, that is a saint.” Some days later, the Sister in kindergarten said, “Today I want to tell you an interesting story of a saint. Who knows what a saint is? “I immediately put up my hand and said, “A saint is transparent. The light shines through him. “Sister was quite surprised!

Without realizing it then- I was but a child – I gave a good definition of a saint. God’s love shines through the saints into this world. Every saint is quite unique. The saints are quite different from each other, but it is the same light that shines though them. God’s love does not only shine though saints, but through every one of us.

The point is, it is not our light that shines into world, but God’s light that shines through us. That does not mean we need to extinguish our personality. On the contrary, it brings to life all our “colors”: our talents, our character, our personality. Yes, the stained glass window shines. But we should be humble enough to know that it is not our light, but God’s light that shines through us.

Let us ask God to give us the courage and the humility to let God’s light, not ours, shine in this world.