FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Isaiah 58:7-10

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

Matthew 5:13-16

Eric works as an EMT in our city. Occasionally he will stop by just to talk and to sift through the rhythms of his life.  One day he shared the story of an emergency call to an apartment where a woman, under the sway of too much to drink, had injured herself. Though her injury was minor, she needed a trip to the hospital.

As Eric tells the story, he became impatient as the woman fussed over which purse to bring and what shoes to wear. Though he didn’t say anything to the woman, she sensed his impatience, and immediately her own mood changed, her defensiveness rose, her calm faded.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Eric did something he hadn’t planned or expected but something that totally changed the situation. He apologized for his impatience. Suddenly, the woman became calm, and the moment softened into something more human, more gracious. It became a moment where the Spirit slipped in through a crack Eric hadn’t planned.

I asked Eric if he thought his decision to apologize arose from a human inclination or from his faith. There was some silence as he thought about that. Sometimes trying to sort out our motivations can become muddled and unclear. Though that instinct was probably a mixture of both, he thought, in the end it came more from his faith than from simply human instinct alone.

In the gospel of this Sunday, Jesus says to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth . . . You are the light of the world.” Without salt life does lose its flavor. Without light we do grope in the dark. Eric’s simple apology transformed the moment, as it does when any of us respond to life with the power of God’s Spirit alive within us.

Author Paul Kingsworth describes how in his words life is increasingly becoming “a machine,” life devoid of the spirit that makes us human. He writes, “It is the year 2025. We are 213 years out from the invention of the first commercial steam engine. It is 155 years since the construction of the first modern factory, 140 years since the invention of the commercial motor car, 122 years since the first manned flight, and 115 years since the invention of the neon light. We are sixty-seven years on from the coming of the microchip. It is sixty-five years since the first contraceptive pill went on sale, sixty years since the first atomic bomb exploded. fifty-six years since man walked on the moon, and a mere eighteen years since the invention of the iPhone.”

Amid what we call the advancement of human life, we fear what seems to be the light of God’s Spirit diming and the flavor of life growing tasteless. We watch individuals mesmerized by phone screens, seemingly incapable or unwilling or uninterested in talking with each other. Anxieties and fear pepper our lives as concerns are voiced over AI and the future. We see the sanctity of national boundaries ignored between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and Gaza, between Venezuela and our own country. Across the globe we see nations shunning new-comers and immigrants. We are befuddled that, in our nation, people struggle to find food for their tables and health care for their bodies. In quieter moments, we can find ourselves wondering what we are becoming as human beings.

As we contemplate a world increasingly drawn into the hum of machinery and efficiency, interested more in productivity and profit, it is life lived out in communities of faith that give voice to the human spirit and to what it means to be human, to live with compassion and kindness and care for one another.

To be light, to be salt, to live in the Spirit – it all echoes the vision of the prophet and poet Isaiah. “Share your bread with the hungry,” he says, “shelter the oppressed and the homeless, clothe the naked when you see them . . . then your light shall break forth.” Such are the things that matter.

Always, wherever people gather in communities of faith, whatever that faith may be, it is there that we hear God’s Word, and it is there that we are reminded of what it means to be human. It is there that we remember how our humanity is sustained not by progress alone but by the small, grace‑filled gestures that pass between us. Eric’s apology, simple as it was, became a reminder that the Spirit still moves wherever the light of faith glows. And so we return to our communities of faith, not out of habit, but because they call us back to the light of being truly human. There, in the company of others seeking the same hope, we remember how to live in a world that is so often in need of light.

FOR REFLECTION

  • What difference does your parish make to the quality of life in your neighborhood?
  • How do you keep from being drawn into the fast-paced and impersonal dimensions of life?