Matthew 5; 13-16. Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Sunday February 9th, 2014
Last Sunday we celebrated the Feast day of the Presentation of the Lord. This feast took the place of the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary time and the Gospel for the Presentation took the place of the normal Gospel on the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time. Now, the Gospel for the Forth Sunday in ordinary time is normally Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for there is the Kingdom of Heaven….Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
It’s important to note this change in the Gospel last week because the Gospel this week and over the next few weeks are tied in with the Beatitudes.
The Beatitudes are in fact, the very conditions that Jesus lays down for entering the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Beatitudes, Jesus demands in love that we live what we believe if we are to be happy, better yet, blessed. Jesus takes the “Thou Shall Nots” of the Ten Commandments and turns them into the “Thou shall do these things in order to be truly happy.” The Beatitudes reminds us then that love consists not just in avoiding sin, but most especially in doing acts of love in order to show forth our love of God and love of neighbor for love of God. In other words, “love is shown by deeds not by sweet words.”
Today Gospel follows then on the heal of Jesus’ teaching of the Beatitudes. The Gospel today teaches us that living the beatitudes is not just for our own spiritual well being, but for the well being of other souls as well. Every single Christian is called to strive for holiness by living the beatitudes in order to be a witness to the whole world to God’s truth and love. By our lives of holiness we are called to seek not only our own salvation but also the salvation of others. As one Jesuit priest put it, “Either we seek the salvation of others or we will not be saved ourselves.” This is our vocation to cooperate with Jesus in love in the salvation of souls.
Vatican II, reiterating the ancient teachings of the Church, called this vocation of ours of using our life to seek the salvation and the sanctification of others, the apostolate. I wonder if this beautiful teaching of Vatican II has been lost because of our modern day emphasis on ministry. There is a ministry for almost every thing, but according to Vatican II, ministry is not the primary role of the laity, but the Apostolate is.
We are to be witnesses throughout the earth by living the beatitudes that is living lives of holiness in order to lead others to God so that they may be saved and so enter into a eternal union of love with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the apostolate; living our lives for love of God and love of neighbor, and love of neighbor consist primarily in working to save our neighbor, even given our lives for the sake of their salvation if necessary. “Whosoever shall seek to save his life, shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose it, shall preserve it.”
Today, Jesus teaches us this by using the images of salt and light. In the old days, as my mom as told me many times, there were no refrigerators, or freezers, the only way meat was kept from spoiling was to store it in salt. Salt preserves food from spoiling; it also brings out the flavor of food and makes its more pleasant. So too, with the world. The world is only kept from spoiling by us Christian Catholics being the salt of the earth, by having the light and the life of Christ alive in our souls.
The holiness of Christians also gives flavor to life in this world, for we, if we live our Catholic faith authentically, remind the world and it’s inhabitants of meaning and goal of man’s existence. Man has been created by God for God. The world is God’s good creation; it sprung forth from the Word of God, and through that same Word it is redeemed and called to return back to the God from which it came. We, you and me, are called to save the world through our holiness of life, witnessing to the world the truth of God and taking the light and life of Christ out into its darkness. We are to help in leading the world back to God, by bringing His grace out into the world. We are to do this in love, in Charity even if we are persecuted for it.
Jesus today however, also reminds us that salt can lose it taste; it other words we are called to be salt to the world by our lives of holiness but if we fail to become holy we loose our taste, that is we fail to be witnesses to the world. What good are we then, but to thrown out and trampled under foot. And so, if it is possible for us to lose our flavor, our Divine Grace, and to be thrown out, how then to we guard from losing our taste, the taste of holiness. How can we be truly light for our world? How can we give the hungry bread to eat?
It is by the Holy Eucharist received and adored with faith weekly, and if possible even daily, that keeps the salt from losing it taste; It is the holy Eucharist approached with faith that it is the Living God truly present in the flesh, in His Resurrected Body and Blood, soul and Divinity, with His Heart beating with Love for each and every soul. It is by approaching Jesus-the God-Man in the Holy Eucharist with great Faith, trust, love, devotion and reverence, that helps our light shine before Men, for our light is Jesus, He who is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is our daily bread, better yet our super-substantial bread, the Bread of Life by which we can feed the world. The world is hungry for the Eucharist, starving for the Eucharist—those who hunger for the love Eucharist are the poorest of the poor and we are to give them some bread ourselves…in other words we are to take the Love of the Eucharist to them and feed them.
The Father’s of the Church wrote that Faithful Catholics who participate fully, actively and consciously in weekly Mass, and receive the Holy Eucharist worthily and in the state of Grace are the “Anima Mundi,” that is, the “soul of the world.” In other words, the world would die in its sins if not for Catholic Christians with the life of Christ, Christ Himself alive in their souls. This life is called charity and we are to share it with the entire world in order that it might be saved.
When we take a full, active, conscious, fruitful part in the Eucharistic action, we allow the Holy Spirit to apply to us the salvation won for us on the cross by God the Son. When we share in the Eucharist, we cooperate in the continuing process of our salvation, which must continue during our whole lives if we are not only to be saved, but become one with God, not just in heaven but here already on earth. And in our union with God, we can produce the fruit of leading and helping others into this same union with God, a union of love, a union with Love Himself-for “God is love (1st John).”
When we pray the preface of the Eucharist, the priest, in Christ’s name, asks us to lift of our hearts, and we respond: “we lift them up to the Lord.” This means of course more than just standing up…it means we are to offer our hearts to the Lord…offer all that we are in a loving sacrifice to our God, who offers His heart, all He is and then gives Himself to us in Holy Communion. This is the sacrifice that we pray, yours and mine, to be acceptable to God our almighty Father. It is a wonderful gift of offering ourselves completely to God in, through and in union with Christ’s offering on the cross. By the power of the Holy Spirit, this unites us to Christ fully and we become his witnesses, just like the apostles and all of the saints. What an awesome calling we have been given; this is how and only how, we can be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
It must be said that this awesome gift comes an awesome responsibility as well. It brings to light why every Catholic must attend Holy Mass every single Sunday and every single Holy Day of obligation, unless he is prevented from doing so by a serious reason, like an illness. To too, brings up the constant teaching of the Church that it is a very serious sin to deliberately miss Sunday Mass or a holy day of obligation, it is actually a mortal sin because it is a complete failure in Charity. When Catholics miss Mass deliberately, they turn our backs on Christ and on the process of their redemption, they refuse to carry out Christ’s command to, “do this in commemoration of me”, and they refuse to receive him and his salvation and thus become salt that has lost its flavor. They can no longer feed the world by bringing it the light of Christ and His Divine Love, which is given to them in the Holy Eucharist if they open their hearts by offering their hearts to God.
The utter folly of what we do by willfully ignoring our Mass obligation is somewhat analogous to a deep-sea diver’s putting a crimp in his air line so that no air can come through to keep him alive. By a decision to miss Sunday Mass or a holy day of obligation the operation of sanctifying grace is suspending in the life of a Catholic, the life of charity in their soul dies, and they can no longer bring the light of Christ to those we meet in our daily lives.
Even our good acts, become devoid of the power to lead others to Christ, because they become merely our own acts, devoid of Christ’s power to elevate them to acts of Charity. Our good human acts are only Charity when the life and light of Christ is alive in our souls. Thus to bring the light of Christ back alive in our souls after we have deliberately missed Mass, and for the sake of our eternal salvation, we must go to confession in true contrition as soon as possible and take the crimp out of air line, so to speak, allowing sanctifying grace again to flood our souls.
But we must do more than just attend Holy Mass we must participated it in with full hearts, minds and voices. We must enter into it sacred mysterious, experience them and allow ourselves to be transformed by them. To do this we must offer ourselves to the Father in union with the offering of Jesus being made truly present on the Sacred Altar by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the gift of the Sacred Priesthood. We must place ourselves on the paten next to the bread, that with we too might be transformed into the Body of Christ, for the sake of the whole world.
What I am about to say is not easy to say. We Catholic Christians are called to be salt and light to the world; we are called to give the hungry of the world some of our bread. If our world is falling into darkness, the problem is not with Governments, politicians, the economy, the terrorists, the radical Muslim, or some great power in this world; no, the problem lies with us Catholics. We have then lost our taste, and who can restore it? Only Jesus, Jesus Truly Present In the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, Jesus who truly continues to offer Himself on the Sacred Altar of every Mass, while at the same looking for those who will give themselves to Him so that He can use them to continue his saving work out in the world by leading souls back to the God who loves them.
As we approach the holy season of lent, let us ask our Lord for the grace to turn from sin and to draw ever closer to Jesus Christ, truly present in the Holy Eucharist. Let us pray too for the grace to enter into the Holy Mass each and every Sunday with deep devotion and deep love, offering ourselves there, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the Father in union with Jesus’ offering on the altar of Sacrifice.. Let us realize the awesome gift we have been given by being able to attend Mass and to receive Jesus, the light of the world, every time we receive Holy Communion, so that we can truly be salt for the earth, and light for the world. And let us make our offering with and through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, help of Christians...Amen.
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