Mt. 5:13-16
Dear Friends,A shocking dimension of the religious scene in the U.S. are the following facts. Roman Catholics are the
largest religious affiliation. The second largest group are those who have left the Roman Catholic Church. In South and Central America, the situation with Church membership is equally shocking.
Somewhere along the way, a great number of us in both of these groups failed to get the memo from Jesus that we need to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. (Mt 5: 13 & 14)
When one delves into the reasons so many people have left the Church, the reasons are many and the blame is on all sides.
However, the answer is clear: get back to the Gospel message. We need to evangelize ourselves and others. Paul VI taught us that evangelization is the process of “bringing the Good News into every strata of humankind and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new.” (Evangeli Nuntiandi #19) He went on to say we need witnesses more than teachers. For him a witness was one whose life spoke with such force and clarity you could not hear what he or she was saying.
In these three verses in today’s Gospel, Jesus is calling us to embrace the totality of the Sermon on the Mount. He is telling us to live the message and to proclaim the message. It is all about love.
We, as a Church, and we as individual followers of Christ, need to encounter the power and the beauty of the call to let our light shine and to make a difference by embracing life in the footsteps of Jesus.
People who struggle to live according to the Beatitudes are in clear resistance to the values of a grasping and divisive consumer society. They are the salt and light we need so desperately. Their lives, often simple and hidden, expose the transforming power of the evangelical salt and light for our world.
Reconciliation and service, forgiveness and generosity are the healing powers that crush division and call us to unity. The Sermon is loaded with strategies for us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We need to bring the focus back to Jesus revealed in the Sermon on the Mount. When we are the salt and light in the footsteps of Jesus, we let others taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
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