You are the light of the world. Let your light shine in such
a way that people may see your good works and give God the glory.
Matthew 5:14,16
My fellow Catholic Christians, do you realize who you are? Did you hear those words from today's gospel reminding us of who we are? “You are the light of the world! Let your light shine! Let your good works be seen so God can be glorified!” The Scriptures tell us in other places that “from your mother’s womb, God gave you your name!” “You are God’s servant through whom God’s glory shines!” “From your mother’s womb God formed you for that task, the task of letting God’s glory shine through you!” “You are made glorious in his sight!” “He made you a light to the nations so that his salvation may reach to the ends of the earth!” Jesus tells us in the gospel reading today that “You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world! You are a city built on a hill! Your light must shine before others! Your good deeds must be out there to be noticed!” Yes, we are “the light of the world!” However, we are like the moon and God is like the sun. The moon has no light of its own, the moon merely reflects the light of the sun. Just so, when people see our light and observe our good deeds, we must make sure that God, the true source of our light, indeed all light, gets the glory!
My fellow Catholic Christians may we want to be who we are! May we want to be who we are! I am here to remind you who we are and what our mission is in this life! We were sent to shine! We were sent to shine so that God will look good in the eyes of the world and receive its praise! We should never put ourselves down! We should never underestimate our worth! We should never belittle ourselves nor play small! We should never let others put us down! We were sent to shine! To keep our lamps burning, we have to keep putting oil in them! Therefore, we need to take care of ourselves – take care of ourselves enough to do hard things for our own good so that our light will shine as brightly as possible! We should always resist the temptation to give into the biggest human temptation and that is to settle for too little! Our families, indeed the world, need us to be who we are and all that we can be!
I came across a Bruce Barton quote recently that has been rolling around inside my head for some time now. Others credit Benjamin Franklin. It is not a new idea, but a life script that I adopted a long time ago. It goes like this! “When we are through changing, we are through.” Us old people, when we were young people, might remember Bob Dylan singing another version of this same idea. “He not busy being born is busy dying.” In other words, if you are not growing, you are not standing still, you are dying! If you are “sent to shine,” you absolutely need to keep putting oil into your lamp! You must keep stoking your own fire!
Winston Churchill said, “Nothing gets better by leaving it alone.” In fact, when we “leave things alone” the natural process of entropy sets in – we start coming unglued, we start declining, we begin to rot! Entropy is that spontaneous and unremitting tendency in the universe toward disorder unless there is an opposing force working against it. People, like homes, when they are left alone fall into decay. Even fruits and vegetables, unless something is done to “preserve” them, begin to rot! When we “leave ourselves alone,” we commit what I call “personal and spiritual suicide.” Personal and spiritual suicide is the result of constantly saying “no” to opportunities to grow and change.”
As one who bought into this idea of “self-formation” a long time ago, I have concluded that there are two secret ingredients to becoming all that we can be as ‘the light of the world.” (1) The first ingredient in really loving oneself is a passionate commitment to personal excellence – to loving who we really are – loving ourselves enough to care about becoming our best selves. Really loving oneself does not mean papering oneself. Rather, it means doing hard things for one’s own good. One of the most critical needs here is the need for a capacity for critical and constructive self-awareness. We must be able to know and understand what makes us tick. We must own my own personal histories and heal them if necessary. In short, we must be dedicated to becoming our best as quality human persons first. Let me put that another way. You cannot take a loser and ordain him and expect to have an effective priest! If he is not a quality human being to begin with, all you will end up with is a loser priest who can’t relate to people or inspire them to hunger for holiness. You cannot take two losers and put them through a wedding and expect to end up with a happy marriage and effective parents! If they are not quality human beings to begin with, all you will end up with is a miserable marriage and disastrous parents!
(2) After a passionate commitment to who one is, being the best version of ourselves, the second ingredient in really loving oneself is a passionate commitment to vocational excellence – a passionate commitment to what we do! In other words, if you are parents, commit yourself to being the very best parent you can be! If you are married, commit yourself to being the best husband or wife you can be! If you are a priest, commit yourself to be the best priest you can possibly be! Whatever you are, be good at it! If you strive to be the best at what you do, you will get better at it. If you choose the “good enough to get by” path, you will become known for your mediocrity. As the leadership guru, Tom Peters, put it “The idea of mediocrity scares the hell out of me!” Without a passionate commitment to vocational excellence, you will no doubt end up being a mediocre priest, a mediocre marriage partner, a mediocre parent or a mediocre professional! The world is already overcrowded with mediocrity – people with no passion for personal or vocational excellence! My mother used to call them “people who merely go through the motions,” “people whose hearts are not in it.” God says to us in Revelations 3:15-16, “Would that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” May God spare you from such mediocrity! May you become the very best version of yourself! May you become who you are! You are the light of the world! Let your light shine! Yes, let it shine! Let it shine!
Brothers and sisters! One of my biggest fears as a priest is not natural death, but spiritual and emotional death, being here and being not here at the same time – “dead on my feet,” if you will! My biggest fear is gradually turning into a priest whose heart is no longer in it! Chaucer’s Parson described such a priest as “a man annoyed at his own life.”
The word used by fourth century monks for this state was acedia. Acedia is not a disease, it’s a temptation – the temptation to disconnect, the temptation to stop caring, the temptation to stop making an effort. It is a temptation that can grow and harden into a persistent attitude of apathy and cynicism which is deadly to any kind of personal or spiritual growth. I find it fascinating that acedia, in its root, means negligence - a negligence that leads to a state of listlessness, a lack of attention to daily tasks and an overall dissatisfaction with life, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s self-care or position or condition in the world. In other words, unlike clinical depression, it can be resisted. The sooner it is confronted the more success one has in turning it around. As the leadership guru, Tom Peters, put it: "Unless you walk into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low."
We all know priests and married couples who woke up one day and found themselves in precisely that spot – with feelings of being stuck, with few options and little hope. Maybe we are, or have been, one of them! If we were to be honest with ourselves we would have to admit that we didn’t get there overnight. It happened because of extended neglect. We didn’t take the time to nourish our individual selves. Many marriages and religious vocations do not die of "natural causes." Too often, they simply die of "starvation!" Too many of us do not take the time to nurture our vocations. We just “let things go!”
Whether we are priests, marriage partners, parents, professionals, widows or widowers, we are all called to resist the temptation toward acedia, the neglect of our personal and spiritual growth. We are the light of the world and there is responsibility that goes with reflecting that light! As Mother Theresa put it. “To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.” Again, Bob Dylan put it this way. “If we are not busy being born, we are busy dying.”
