Sunday, March 13, 2016

"I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD."

Homily for March 14th, 2016: John 8:12-20.
          “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says in the gospel. How dark the world would be without him. In baptism we were commissioned to be lenses and prisms of that light, shining from the face of Jesus Christ. In the first letter of John we learn how we fulfill that commission. “Whoever loves his bother remains in the light . . . Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:10f).
          To understand these words we need to know that the words “love” and “hate” in that passage do not refer to feelings. They refer to our conduct. This becomes clear if we look at Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats in chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel. There Jesus says that when we come to stand before God in judgment, he won’t ask us how many prayers we’ve said, or how many Masses we have attended. He will ask instead how we have treated other people.
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