What I Preached at Notre Dame

“Let Your Light Shine!”

Matthew 5:1-16
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to God. “ So declared the invitation to this Evening Prayer of Thanksgiving. And tonight we lit candles, symbolically adding an explanation mark to Jesus’ command. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to God. “ The temptation, I suppose, is to name your light, to bless you for your light, and then to send you with Jesus’ instructions to let that light shine. And yet, to yield to this temptation suggests that the light is, in fact, yours; that the light is something you possess, something that your years of theological education got you, something that we had a hand in giving you, something that you can and do control. To bless you for your light and send you to let it shine suggests that you are, in fact, Masters of Divinity.

If only this were so. Truth be told, this is not the first time you’ve been blessed and sent. Somebody, some body, some community, some assembly blessed you and sent you to Notre Dame to become a Master of Divinity. I hope we didn’t accomplish that. I hope you don’t leave us thinking that you have mastered Divinity, that the light is your possession, and that you can and do control it.

You see, the light—your light, my light, our light, any light that we possess—is a gift. It is God’s gift, poured into us in baptism, when someone lit a candle from the paschal candle and handed it to us or to someone on our behalf. In so doing, the Church declared that, more than God’s gift, the light that God gives us is God’s Very Self—the light of the Father, which brought order out of chaos and called forth life in God’s own image; the light of the Son, which shines in the darkest of places and cannot be overcome and which brings the dawn of resurrection; and the light of the Holy Spirit, which shines in our hearts and in our heads and in our hands, gifting us to share in God’s own work of reconciliation, recreation, and new life.

So what we have done together in these three years is not give you light, though I suspect there were times when we made you somewhat salty. Sometimes we trimmed the lamp, kindled the flame, and stoked the fire. And so your light shone brightly. Sometimes, we allowed soot and smoke to build up, withdrew the atmosphere and fuel that help a candle to burn, threw on a bucket or two of cold water and offered up some bushel baskets for you to climb in and hide. And your light shone a bit less brightly. And even if it felt like your light had gone out, it hadn’t. It hadn’t. And it never will.

For the light that shines in you is none other than Christ. It’s not up to you to conjure the light. It’s not up to you to control the light. Rather than claiming the light as your possession, allow the light that is Christ to possess you. When you do, I suspect that, wherever you are going from here and whatever you choose to do with your life, you will find yourself mourning, meek and merciful; hungry and thirsty for righteousness, bent on peace, poor in spirit, even persecuted. You will also be blessed for you will be sharing the life and the light of Christ.

In other words, you will be pure in heart. You will see God--at work in your life, in our world, in the people around you. You will be pure in heart. Or, as one translator put it, "Blessed are the single-hearted." Blessed are those whose hearts are fixed on God.

Perhaps something we learned in these three years is that purity of heart, single-heartedness, and faithful focus are difficult, if not impossible, to sustain amid the ambiguities of this life. Pain, loneliness, frailty and confusion are strong distractions, and the very questions of life cause our flames to flicker and to fade. And so it becomes very easy for us to conclude that such purity of heart, such single-heartedness, such faithful focus is a special gift meant only for a few special people, maybe those who have mastered Divinity. The problem with that is, even as they hand us the diploma, we know that we haven’t mastered Divinity.

The good news is that we do not have to. For, though Christ’s light is special, Christ does not confine it to special people. That’s what Jesus’ ministry, and especially the cross, is all about. And in the resurrection, Christ declares his intention that the light of his resurrection, the light of his love, the light of his life will shine so brightly that no one is left sitting in darkness, no part of creation is lost in the shadows, nothing is lost in death. As the Church declares in the Exultet, the glory of Christ’s resurrection is not diminished, even when its light is divided and shared. The default setting on the light that is Christ is to shine.

So, we bless you with the assurance that the light is not something you conjure or control. The light is Christ shining in you as he has since you were joined to his death and resurrection in baptism. And we send you not so much to let your light shine as to not hide it under a bushel basket. We do this best when we worry less about our own light and allow the light of Christ shining around us to keep us pure in heart, faithfully focused on God. So, more than blessing and sending you, we are here to thank God. For in these three years, your light helped us to be faithfully focused on God, even when you couldn’t see it.