Homily for Tuesday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time

For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/061008.shtml

Being the light of the world has nothing to do with proselytism. Evangelization is not imposing our beliefs on others, but proposing them as a source of eternal life. Pope Benedict is working so hard through the Church's dialogue with Islam to show them that there is no true religion unless first human freedom is understood, respected and exalted. He is working very hard, for example, to show that allowing Catholic Churches to be built in Muslim countries is no danger to Islam, just as having mosques in Christian countries is no danger to Christianity, so long as both religions are open to pursuing the truth. In our relations with other Christian religions, the Pope directs us in the same way to celebrate common ground, but then to propose to other Christians the distinctive 'light' that is the Catholic faith and tradition, the fullness of the means of grace to which Christ entrusted to His bride the Church. To try to 'hide' certain aspects of our Catholic faith in order to achieve a superficial peace with others goes against today's Gospel's call to let our light shine before others. The Church always proposes authentic faith in Christ without ever imposing it. This is the way we are to evangelize.

To be holy is to be the salt of the earth. Jesus instructs his disciples that without attention to the moral life and to prayer, one can easily lose his flavor and become useless within the vineyard of the Lord. Our fidelity to prayer and to the sacraments, and our determination to sensitize our consciences against relativism, are ways that we keep from becoming flavorless and flat. If we simply blend into the culture around us, there is no way that we can be light. Worst of all, unless we keep our flavor, and remain closely united to the Christ the vine of whom we are the branches, we will not recognize all the missed opportunities out there to be light for others. This of course, for the serious Christian, is the worst kind of offense of all - not so much what we have done, but the ways that we have failed to be the light of the world.