By Fr. Roy Cimagala
THAT’S what Christ tells us about who we are and what we are supposed to do in this world. “You are the salt of the earth... You are the light of the world.” (cfr. Mt 5,13-16) He addressed these words to his disciples. And if we consider ourselves also as disciples of his, then we should also regard these words as being addressed to us.
We have to take these words seriously and figure out how we can conform ourselves to what Christ wants us to be. We know that salt somehow gives a certain flavor to our food as well as helps in preserving highly perishable food items. Light, of course, enables us to see things clearly.
We can readily conclude that what Christ wants is for us to provide Christian flavor in a world that is fast evolving, as well as help in preserving the true Christian spirit in a world that is so exposed to a lot of changes, many of them with their luggage of dangers even as they also offer a lot of benefits.
We also are meant to give light to the others by giving good example and by actively doing apostolate, leading people to God along the right if prudent and tortuous and treacherous paths of this world. With rectitude of intention, we have to inspire others to follow us so that with us they can come to Christ.
Let’s make St. Paul’s words ours also: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” (1 Cor 11,1) These words are a corollary to what Christ said about us being light of the world: “Your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” (Mt 5,16)
Let’s try our best that we too can echo another of St. Paul’s words: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2,20)
This is the ideal to aim at, because Christ himself said, “I am the light of the world... the man who follows me will have the light of life.” (Jn 8,12)
We can only give the true light if we have the light of Christ, if we are with Christ and so identified with him that whoever sees and hears us sees and hears Christ. (cfr. Lk 10,16)
We cannot overemphasize, therefore, our need to be identified with Christ who, after all, is the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity. We are supposed to ‘alter Christus’ (another Christ) if not ‘ipse Christus’ (Christ himself), an ideal that can be realized by us because Christ has given us all the means for it.
We should just do our part, studying deeply the life and teachings of Christ, incarnating them into our life, and availing ourselves of the sacraments where Christ himself, especially in the Holy Eucharist, gives himself to us even as food.
We should be so identified with Christ that wherever we are, whatever the situation, we always feel the urge, if not the instinct, to give witness to him through our words and deeds. Even if we are deeply immersed in our earthly affairs, with all the mundane and technical things they involve, we should be able to project and channel the presence and the abiding work of Christ on all of us.
For this, we need to have a certain boldness, overcoming our usual shyness and awkwardness in carrying out this duty. If we remain simple and humble, we actually can do it with great ease, because more than us it would be Christ who will be doing things through us and with us.
Let us be salt and light of this world as Christ wants us to be. And let’s encourage and help everyone else to be so. This is actually where our true joy is, where our true self-fulfillment can be achieved.
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Connect the little to the big always. While it’s true that we have to take care of the little things in our life, we should not forget that we are not meant to get detained there. We should always relate the little ordinary things in our life to the big and ultimate purpose of our life.
Christ himself somehow referred to this point when he said, “Whoever is faithful with very little will also be faithful with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” (Lk 16,10)
With those words, Christ somehow was relating and connecting the little with the big things in life. That is what we should always do. We should avoid getting entangled and lost in the little things and forgetting the big and more important things in our life.
More specifically, we should not mistake the means for the end. Otherwise, we would also receive the accusation Christ addressed to the Pharisees and some leading Jews of his time, who were entangled with their own ideas of what is right and wrong without referring them to God.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,” he said, “you pay tithes of mint, dill and cumin, but you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Mt 23,23-24)
This anomaly can happen to us when in our confessions, for example, we accuse ourselves only of our failures to do our prayers, to offer sacrifices, to attend some daily Masses, etc., without mentioning how we have fared in our graver duty to do apostolate, to Christianize our work and society in general, to reach out to the poor and the needy, to be forgiving of others who may have wronged us, etc.
This is not to say that our prayers, sacrifices, recourse to the sacraments, etc., are not important. They are, and they should not be regarded as optional, as a matter of fact. They are indispensable too.
But if our failures in this department do not have the corresponding effects on the more important aspects of Christian life, there is reason to think that we are just mistaking the means for the end, the material for the spiritual, the temporal for the eternal, the natural for the supernatural.
We need to wake up from this anomaly, because like the Pharisees and the scribes of old, we could justly be accused by Christ to be hypocrites. And actually, many people today can also see that.
We would simply be caring of the externals without the internal, the form and appearance without the substance.
The example we can give to others would show a certain hollowness and artificiality. And many people can detect that quite easily, because this phenomenon, sad to say, is getting common. Thus, we can expect people to be turned off by what they see in us.
They are now more familiar with how hypocrisy and artificiality look, how they sound, how they smell. They are now more skilled in sifting our words from our deeds, the image from the real McCoy. They can easily verify the authenticity of our words and actions.
To be able to connect the little things to the big, important things in our life is, of course, no easy task. It requires training, effort, self-discipline. It will always need God’s grace which we should always ask.
And given our human condition where our development involves different stages, let us hope that we do not remain in the kindergarten level in this respect, in the amateur and dilettante level. We have to aim at nothing less than the mature and professional level, where a certain consistency or unity of life that is rooted on God’s grace and on our constant effort, is achieved.
E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com
