Allow me to begin with a suggestion that, as we listen to Jesus in the readings of this third week in ordinary time (Year A), we should find our place among the different crowds he addresses. And as we sit with the crowds, we should hear Jesus subtly put this question to us: “Would you bring in a lamp to put it under a tub or under a bed?”
I cannot predict how each one would respond to such a question. However, such simple question challenges us to examine the soil on which our Christian values are cultivated. Such question invites us to evaluate how well we have shared in God’s vision for this world. Each one of us may want to conduct a reality check and ask ourselves the following: How have I been a lamp to those around me? On which aspect of humanity have I really cast the radiance of God that I bear?
Implicitly, our Christian identity requires us to embrace Jesus’ cause as our own. And our onerous task as bearers of God’s light can be likened to that of a candle that eventually burns out in order to illuminate a room. In a way, such a task comes with a price tag. For some of us, to be able to shine may require us to risk the cross. Although it is not the ideal, the cross remains for us a culmination of how our discipleship or imitation of Jesus – as the Divine Light - should look like.