Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

There is a particular temptation that comes in the evening of life - the feeling that your light no longer matters. That the world has moved on, that younger voices carry further, that whatever you had to offer has already been given.

Jesus says otherwise.

He does not say, "You were the light of the world." He does not say, "You will be the light of the world when you are more accomplished, more energetic, more relevant." He says you are. Present tense. Right now. In your seventies, in your eighties, in your diminishment - you are the light of the world.

Isaiah gives us the specifics: share bread with the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, do not turn your back on your own. And then - then - your light shall break forth like the dawn. Notice the order. The light does not come from talent or vigor. It comes from mercy. And mercy does not require young legs.

Paul, writing to the Corinthians, confesses that he came to them in weakness and fear and trembling. Not with eloquent speeches. Not with dazzling credentials. With weakness. And it was precisely through that weakness that the power of God was demonstrated.

This is the great secret of this season of life: your weakness is not an obstacle to your witness. It may be the very thing that makes your witness credible. The young can speak of God's power from a position of strength. But when someone who is tired, who aches, who has buried a spouse, who faces the slow erosion of independence - when that person speaks of hope, the world listens differently. That testimony carries a weight that vigor cannot provide.

A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Neither can a life of faith lived over decades. Your children have watched you. Your grandchildren are watching still. The neighbors who see you walk to church, the friends who know you pray, the family who has seen you suffer without bitterness - they see a city on a hill, whether you know it or not.

You do not need to do anything spectacular. You need only to not hide. Do not put your lamp under a bushel basket. Do not retreat into the comfortable darkness of believing you no longer matter. You matter. Your faith matters. Your light - dimmed perhaps by years, flickering perhaps with fatigue - still shines.

Salt does not announce itself. It simply does what salt does. Light does not argue for its own importance. It simply shines.

Shine.