“We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.”
For a moment, I ask you to imagine yourself
entering into an extremely dark alley way.
What would you do to improve the situation?
The obvious answer is to turn on a flashlight
or today, you probably will reach into your pocket,
take out your iPhone or your phone and use it as a light.
But turn on a light. It’s a survival issue.
We cannot fight darkness with darkness.
We fight darkness with light.
It’s also true with life.
When darkness or evil enters our life,
it is sort of obvious that the thing to do would be
to shine a light in the midst of that evil or darkness.
That is easier said than done
because when somebody says or does something evil,
we tend to push back, and we tend to give back what we receive.
We get some harsh words; we give harsh words back.
If mean things are said, we say something mean back.
That is fighting darkness with darkness.
It does not improve the situation;
we will just have further darkness.
This is the very topic of our readings today
although we must work to pull it apart
because it is quite cryptic especially our gospel today.
We have to take it in the context of the whole gospel.
Jesus, at this point in his ministry, is heading towards Jerusalem.
He knows his death is coming and he is heading to Jerusalem.
He knows that the darkness in the world is real.
His disciples are following him, and they are so euphoric;
everything is wonderful;
they are healing people;
people are listening to them in large crowds.
And they cannot see anything that is going wrong.
And Jesus says, “Oh, you don’t understand.”
So he is trying to give them lessons on
what is ahead wherever they are at in this point in time;
he is trying to teach them that darkness is real in the world.
He knows he is going to be killed.
He is trying to tell them evil will have its day.
This darkness will come.
Some people want the darkness.
People who live in darkness want to remain in darkness.
You should try to understand that.
Jesus gives us this message of division and it is hard to hear:
two against three in a household;
father against a son;
daughter against the mother.
This is a hard one to understand.
Maybe the last one is the only one we would understand:
Mother-in-law against daughter-in-law.
Just kidding! I’m sorry. Sorry.
Joking aside,
Jesus is trying with this lesson on darkness
how people who live in the darkness like the darkness.
And therefore, do not want the light.
If we think about that in our current world,
and where we are at today,
there is so much evil and darkness that exists,
and there is so much division that exists.
People who like division continue to use the words of division
and will continue to do so. Why?
Because they relish the darkness.
They do not want the light.
The light will show them up as being divisive;
as being on the wrong side.
We must be careful to not get sucked into
that world of darkness and of evil
and find ourselves giving back what we have been given:
divisiveness, ugliness, nastiness,
unkindness, uncharitableness
and picking on groups of people.
We are called to shine a light in the midst of that darkness.
We are called to be the light in that darkness.
We are the ones called to shine the light of God’s Divine love
because that is what God has given to us.
This is what Jesus is saying:
“I wish the world was a blaze of fire.”
This is what he is talking about.
Ablaze with fire of the Divine love of God.
If there was all this light, there would be no darkness.
If there was a Divine love shining through everyone
then there would be no darkness in the world.
Again, that is so easy to say up here
but it is really hard to do in our ordinary lives.
And so that is the challenge, “What do we do?”
Here is where the letter to the Hebrews gives us an important point:
He says we do not do it alone.
We see that is what God’s message in Jesus Christ is:
“We do not do it alone.”
And when we try to do it alone, it is difficult if not next to impossible.
The letter to the Hebrews says:
We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,
the Communion of Saints.
And that is what we celebrate every time we come to the Eucharist.
We ask the Communion of Saints to come around us,
surround us as we celebrate this Eucharist;
to help us to live this reality.
It is not just here that we ask for that cloud of witnesses to come.
We claim to take that with us everywhere we go.
Now with this great cloud, the formal saints,
we ought to take a look at the lives of those saints
because they can be heroic, aspirational and inspirational for us.
Some of the modern saints that we know,
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
is sort of an obvious example that comes to us.
Talk about a Divine Light of love shining through her smile.
Or think of St. Oscar Romero
or the more traditional saints such as
St. Francis of Assisi; St. Ignatius;
or St. Theresa of Avila; St. John of the Cross; or St. Therese Lisieux;
whatever saints you identify with.
Look at their lives;
examine what is it that they did and how they did it;
and be inspired and try to follow that example in our own lives.
That is what this cloud of witnesses does for us.
And here is the important part:
They will help you do it.
Call upon them.
Call upon St. Francis;
call upon St. Simon;
call upon the saint that you have closest to your heart
and ask them to help you on your way;
to give you the model.
This communion of saints does not just stop
with the formal saints as we call them, the named saints,
it is also those people in our lives who have gone before us,
who are models for us in our lives.
They do not necessarily need to be perfect people.
That is the mistake we make when we think about saints;
that there is perfection, there is perfection but it is integration.
Perfection is integration in the lives of the saints;
the good and the bad is integrated into the good.
Think of your loved ones that have gone before you;
maybe it is your grandparents,
maybe it is your parents,
maybe it is a sibling, a close friend, or some other person
that you knew that was inspirational to you and a model.
Think to yourself. “I want to be just like that,
that is how I want other people to remember me.”
This last week, we buried two of our retired priests.
One yesterday, Monsignor Lou Andre,
one of the pastors from here at St. Simon; 65 years of priesthood!
And Monsignor John Sandersfeld earlier in the week;
nearly 60 years of priesthood.
Between the two of them 125 years of priestly service.
They were not perfect people
but they were faithful witnesses to
the Divine love of God in all of their lives.
We look to people like that and we say,
“That is what we want to be like.”
You might say that is all great;
that’s good but how does that apply to us today.
We are claiming to call forth the cloud of witnesses
to be here with us today and
we will then receive the Body of Christ.
Then we claim that we are going to be part of those witnesses.
If we think that we are getting out of here free, we are not.
Just understand we are taking on a major responsibility.
When we receive, we promise to become what we receive.
We promise to become a witness to what we have just heard:
The Word of God come alive in our heart.
We promise to become the Body of Christ for others.
That is a daunting task.
That is why we need to receive
because we need to receive the Christ;
we need to be reminded of the Divine love that we receive
so that we become the Divine love in the light of the world.
In a sense if you are not up for the task, go ahead leave now
because that is what you are up to;
that is what you are signing up for.
I do not want you to leave now.
I am just being rhetorical.
My point is that is how serious this is.
And when we sort of do not take it seriously,
in a sense we are bringing scandal to what we do here.
Here is the really important part of this.
If every single one of us here today
absolutely made that commitment and
went out of here being a true witness
to the Divine love of God in our life
and to shine only light and
not give any darkness but only shine our light on everything,
tell me that would not make a huge difference.
Tell me that this community wouldn’t come alive and be aflame!
That is why the Lord is saying
“How I anguish that the whole world
was not aflame with the love of God.”
And so it should be.
And that is now our responsibility to do.
Let’s not just hear the words but let’s live the words.
Let’s live the words of being the Divine love.
Every single one of us is going to get a different challenge.
Whatever darkness comes into our life this week,
or whatever darkness we hear,
we are going to promise to turn on the light.
We are going to be good and kind.
We are going to be forgiving.
We are going to be generous.
We are going to promise to shine the love of God.
And thus, we will overcome any darkness of any alley way we walk.
That is how the world will be ablaze with God’s love.
We become the cloud of witnesses this week.
