You are the light of the world—Sunday of the Holy Fathers

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God, Amen.

Why does God not act in the world more often?  I pray, I know other Christians pray, yet there is war and disease, illness and suffering.  Why has God abandoned us?

But the Lord says, “You are the light of the world.”  Notice, dear brothers and sisters, the word he uses: he does not call us the Sun which shines on us only during daylight hours nor a lamp which may be obscured, covered and extinguished.  He calls you, and he calls me, to be light itself: illumining all the world.  And you and I here gathered, on this first day of the week, are reminded of the first first-day, “Let there be light.” (Gen. 1:3)  The Light is Christ,

In [Christ] was life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

John 1:4f

This world is fallen, this world is broken, and this is proven by the Cross.  When God incarnate came to his people he was rejected and subjected to the most horrible of deaths—from where we get the word excruciating—death on a cross.  But where we offer hope, where we are light in this world of darkness, where we bring the Kingdom of God into our world, then we can become the human beings we were made to be.

You, dear brothers and sisters, and I are the body of Christ here in this world: we are his hands and his feet, he has called us to be his light.  So when we pray for God to act we should hear God’s reply, “This is good: now you go do it.”  And in so doing, in so acting, we can bring about the Kingdom of God.  For it is primarily through us that God acts in this world: through us the hungry should be fed, through us the thirsty should be given drink, through us the stranger should be taken in, through us the naked should be clothed, through us the sick and the prisoners should be visited.

My dear brothers and sisters, God has not abandoned the world, he has given the world us to be its light.  Let us take up this calling to be his light, that we may offer illumination in this world through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Amen.