Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Being Full of Life

February 9, 2014
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 
Is 58, 7-10 /1Cor 2, 1-5 / Mt 5, 13-16

 
Jesus said to his disciples: You are to be the dullness in life.  You are to be life’s blandness.  And you are to be the paleness, the dimness, the murkiness we find each day in life.  So, among yourselves, just be cool and indifferent.  Let your reactions to whatever happens be lukewarm.  And as for your words to one another – let them be nicely shallow, politely predictable and pleasantly superficial.  Basically, just be “bread and water” for one another.  In summing up your relation to life as it comes at you, let these words do the summing up: “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.”

Now Jesus did not really say such things to his disciples, did he?  In fact, he chose very different images for his disciples – images that directly contradict those we’ve just heard.  As disciples, he says, you are not to be bland – not dull.  Rather, you are to be the salt of the earth.  Your very presence is to lend taste to life.  It is to enhance life’s flavor and bring out for others their own savor and spice.  It’s in your absence that life should seem to become bland and dull.

You are not to even give a hint of appearing pale or dim or murky – because you are to be light for the world.  Your presence brings brightness and warmth – allowing others to recognize and rejoice in the brilliance and fire they bring to life.  It is in your absence that life should seem to become shadowy and lives should seem to remain unthawed and stiff.

Jesus chose simple yet life-giving, nourishing images to describe his disciples – to describe us.  Salt: it opens up a person to flavor – even to their own flavor.  Light: it allows a person to see and grasp reality - even their own reality.  We are to feed, fuel and flame up one another’s lives.

That is how Jesus would have us understand and imagine ourselves.  Stop and think on this!  What would our everyday lives look like – if we really took on to ourselves, really inhabited the images Jesus is using about us?  I am salt!  I am light!  I give flavor to life – to others.  I am a lamp bringing luster – to others.  Imagine wanting to say to others: I want to feed and flow into your life.

Jesus recognized just how powerfully images communicate.  Remember he told us he wanted to become “bread and wine” for us in our life journey.  He wanted to share his love and his life with us.  He recalls us to those images at every liturgy.  I want to be bread and wine – body and blood for you.  Take from me and eat.  Be nourished.  Take and drink me in.  Be satisfied.

Images are such powerful communicators.  But stop and think on this.  What if you imagined yourself not “bread and wine” but rather “bread and water” – a diet given to people to chasten, sadden and punish them.  You could not – you would not dare invite another to take of my life and drink me in.  Sadly, you could not dream of yourself bringing nourishment and goodness to others.

Self-image tells us who the person is we really live with.  Who am I – to myself?  Am I here – as a disciple?  Am I here – trying to learn how to be a disciple?  Or, am I here – just to go to church?

At this Eucharist let us allow Jesus to speak to us his self-image and our self-image: bread and wine – body and blood – given out for the life of the world.  Let that be our communion with the Lord and with one another.  Together we give ourselves out – for the life of the world.
 
 
Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

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