A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, you are the salt of the earth. But what if salt goes flat? How can you restore its flavor? When it goes flat, it is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Men do not light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket. They set it on a stand where it gives us light to all in the house. In the same way, your light must shine before men, so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly father.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. The first thought that strikes me whenever I read this text is this, our blessed lord didn't hand his disciples a book. Have you noticed that?
He didn't hand them a printed document or a written document. He said, You are the light of the world, and you don't put your light under a bushel basket. Rather, you place it in a way that the whole world can see that light. And you know, if you've had any experience with darkness and light, how this comes through, that the darker the night, the more brilliant becomes the smallest light. There's one lesson we can learn from our blessed lord, and that is this.
You know, he didn't talk in abstract terms. Jesus Christ didn't. Christ didn't philosophize. We do that. He didn't talk in abstractions, in universalities, in the sense in which we do today, and are forced to do it.
I make no apologies for it. We're forced to do it. But Christ didn't do it. Christ didn't talk about matter and form, substance and accident, transubstantiation, when he said, This is my body, this is my blood. Eat it, this is my flesh, and unless you do it, you will not have life in you.
He didn't explain it at all. Even when the large numbers of his followers left him, because they said, Who in the name of heavens can accept this kind of nonsense? So they left him. And he didn't explain at all. He repeated it in almost identical the same terms as Saint John recounts.
And then he turns to his disciples, these these guys who are so close to him, and he said, are you going to leave me too? Notice, he didn't explain a thing. He says, you gonna go too? Or go ahead. Our blessed Lord had both feet on this earth.
He was truly man. And he was a great teacher, but he taught with authority. With authority. That's what Saint Paul in this first reading today, Christ wasn't yes and no. Maybe rather, perhaps, to all appearances, it is my guess that, in my opinion, it is this, there's nothing like that in Jesus Christ.
It is, period. Period. No wishy washyness about Jesus Christ. That came in later. That's where we are champions.
It seems to me that it appears to be this way. Well, maybe you are right, but on the other hand, maybe you're wrong. And we go on and on and on as if there were no truth in the world. And yet our blessed lord makes this perfectly clear. There is an absolute truth in the world, god almighty.
There's an absolute goodness in this world, god almighty. There's an absolute justice in this world, god almighty. Now, this isn't saying that we can comprehend God. Remember, our blessed Lord didn't explain any of this. He talked about the father and the son and the spirit.
He didn't explain the holy trinity. He didn't talk about persons and nature and hypostasis and substantia. Not at all. But we were forced to do it. Council of Nicaea and Ephesus and Constantinople in the fourth and fifth centuries.
But Christ didn't do it. Now, I'm not as I have said, we are human beings. We have language. We try to communicate. And when you do that, you have to try to make yourself clear.
That is, if you're a sensible person. That's not what what is done today. You can end the best kind of an argument you ever had in your life by simply saying, what do you mean by this? They're insulted. They say everybody knows what we mean by law.
Everybody knows what we mean by right. Everybody knows what we mean by love. Well then, I always feel like saying, if everybody knows it, you tell me now. And of course, that's the end of the argument. That's the end of the discussion.
You've ruined a beautiful afternoon. You have not won a friend, I assure you. This is not the way to influence people at all. But this is the way it is. This is the way it is.
There is an objective truth, and there is a thing called faith. And there is another aspect of human activity called knowledge. And we must keep these things straight. Must keep them as straight as we can. Because once once you get them mixed up, then you are in utter confusion.
The light of the world has dimmed and is in the way of going out. Believe me. Believe me. When you say that my faith creates Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, as the Protestant did, then you have denied the objectivity of Christ, of course. And therefore our blessed Lord is not present in the Eucharist under the aspects of bread and wine except insofar as your faith makes him present.
On the other hand, as far as you're concerned, the presence of Jesus, actual, real, total, under the appearances of bread and wine will be meaningless for you unless you have faith. You see how the things get together? It's tight and so easy to go wrong. It's so easy to go wrong with the best of intentions. Nobody have you know, when it comes to intentions, I don't care about them.
Because not everybody has good intentions. Hitler, the devil, Machiavelli, the whole caboodle, they all have good intentions. But the point is, you see, that the thing can be very objective, but I can close it off. I can cut off all lines of communication. I can close out the brightest sun with my little forefinger.
I don't see the sun. For me the sun is nonexistent, but it's up there. Sight, touch, and taste in thee, Saint Thomas Aquinas said about the Eucharist. All the senses are deceived. The ear alone is to believe.
Faith. But you see faith only makes me brings me into contact with reality. Faith doesn't create reality. No matter how much I believe it won't put Jesus Christ in a piece of bread. And so we come back to our blessed Lord.
You are the light of the world. You can't when a little I I do so few baptisms that every time I do it, I'm terribly impressed. The baby doesn't seem to be nearly as impressed as I am. But I am extremely impressed. When you take this tiny little baby and you say, you take this big candle, the Easter candle, and you say, you are you are the light of the world.
You are to carry this light. You are Lucifer's. You are carriers of this light. But you notice what our how our blessed lord ended this paragraph. He says, that the world may see your goodness, but that's not the end of it, you see.
And give praise to your heavenly father. That's the key. There have been plenty of good people in this world, plenty of good people. Don't ever think there aren't and haven't been. But you see, it isn't enough to be simply good.
Not if you're a Christian. Not if you're a Christian. You may be the most profound believer in natural law that the world has ever seen, but it doesn't make you a Christian. Natural law doesn't put Jesus Christ on the cross. Natural law doesn't tell you about salvation.
You may have all the peace in this world and be eternal eternities from God's peace, from his salvation. And remember, our blessed Lord said, I have come that you may have faith and that you may have salvation. That's that's what Jesus said. And so we have to keep this in our daily lives. It isn't enough just to be good.
We have to be good for god's sake. In other words, what we're saying is our lives have to be god centered, Focused on God almighty. Not on me, not on my neighbor, not on this world, but on God. And then remember, if that is true, if our lives are focused on God, then everything else will fall into order. Cardinal Newman in his Anglican difficulties in the last half of the nineteenth century, he's gone into this, gone into it thoroughly.
That is, the church does stand for culture. This church does stand for education. The church does stand for civilization. The church does stand for all these wonderful things that we call part of being a civilized man. But they're incidental.
Christ didn't come to make us philosophers. He didn't come to make us great writers, great inventors, elegant livers. All he did was to save us, and he did it on the cross. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit, amen.