9781644135945

The Light of the World
entrusted us to His Son, the Savior, through baptism. He is the Good Shepherd, who will
lead us to green pastures. He is the bread of life (the Eucharist) and the fountain of living
waters (baptism). Therefore let us go to Christ, the Good Shepherd. “To Thee, O Lord, is
the poor man left: Thou wilt be a help to the orphan” (Gradual). “Give praise, O ye heavens,
and rejoice, O earth; . . . because the Lord hath comforted His people, and will have mercy
on His poor ones” (Epistle). He shows His mercy in the sacraments of baptism, penance,
and the Eucharist. “The Lord is become my firmament and my refuge and my deliverer:
and in Him will I put my trust” (Offertory).
“I am the light of the world; he that followeth Me, walketh not in darkness, but shall
have the light of life” (Gospel). How unfortunate are those who have not received baptism!
Unfortunate, too, are those who, having received baptism, relapse into sin and separate
themselves from Christ, the light. Like the Jews of today’s Gospel, they walk in the darkness
of night, having turned away from the light. They cannot, in fact, bear the light. They would
even extinguish it, “but His hour was not yet come.” The light was withdrawn from the Jews,
they walked in darkness. Only a few days yet, and they would ask a pagan judge to nail their
Savior to the cross. In the presence of the pagan judge and before the eyes of the world
they were to reject Him whom their fathers had so eagerly longed for, and who had been
promised them by their prophets through the centuries that had gone before. They were to
reject Him to whom all their religious worship and their sacrifices had been offered. “Give
us Barabbas.” “What, then, shall I do with Jesus, the king of the Jews?” Pilate asks. Screaming
they cry out: “Crucify Him, crucify Him. . . . His blood be upon us and our children” (Lk
23:21; Mt 27:25). They indeed walked in the darkness. Can a greater misfortune happen
to a nation, to humanity, to a soul than to be visited with spiritual blindness? How fatal the
blindness that will not see Christ! Pride, self-sufficiency, and perverse adherence to the
Mosaic law made Israel blind to Christ, the true light.
“I am the light of the world.” Israel turned away from the light, and it was given to us who were
chosen from among the pagans. We were selected through baptism and by our adherence to
Christ, “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the
kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission
of sins. . . . And He is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the first-born from
the dead” (Col 1:13 ff.). We have been incorporated into Him in a living union. “I am the light
of the world,” the Sun of truth and justice.
Are we truly walking in the light? The reception of baptism in itself is not enough. Our life
must be a continual renunciation of all that is evil, of all that is in opposition to God. We must
believe in Christ, in eternity, in the resurrection of the dead to eternal life. Because we believe
these things, we must accept His commandments and keep them. What is the unmistakable
test to determine whether we are walking in the light or not? “He that saith that he is in the
light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth
in the light, and there is no scandal in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and
walketh in darkness and knoweth not whither he goeth, because the darkness hath blinded
his eyes” (1 Jn 2:9 ff.). When we receive Holy Communion today we acknowledge gratefully:
“The Lord ruleth me, and I shall want nothing; He hath set me in a place of pasture; He hath
brought me up on the water of refreshment” (Communion).
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