Monday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, September 25, 2023

Luke 8, 16-18

Jesus said to the crowd: “No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a bed; rather, he places it on a lamp-stand so that those who enter may see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light. Take care, then, how you hear. To anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.”

“No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a bed; rather, he places it on a lamp-stand so that those who enter may see the light.”  The Lord points out a piece of common sense and an action performed in houses every day.  Many of the Lord’s teachings use very simple metaphors and similes.  He delights in simplicity.  One day, at the last judgment when all is revealed, we will look back at our lives and wonder at how simple God’s plan for us was.  He marks out such a direct path to our vocation and to heaven, but we insist on taking detours, alleged short-cuts, we make wrong turns — but it really is within the means of all of us to reach the goal of heaven.  It is likewise possible to take the Lord’s simple words here and try to put more into them than belongs there in order to validate some idea of our own.  In this verse the Lord is speaking after he has told the Parable of the Sower in which we learn about the reasons why the Lord’s preaching is not accepted or persevered in.  Now he continues to speak of his preaching, which he does either through his own mouth or through the Apostles and their successors in the years to come.  He calls it “a lit lamp”.  It is to be made known to all the world and not to some some fraction of it, as only to the Jews.  The “room”, then, means the earth.  The preaching is not to be concealed with a vessel of secrecy nor hid under the bed of obscurity — his words are not to be so confused by a preacher that they make no sense at all.  Those who rejoice in the name of “Christian” and preach the Gospel formally as well and those who do so by their ordinary words and actions must themselves be lit lamps after the manner of St. John the Baptist: “He was a burning and a shining light” (John 5, 35).

“For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.”  The one who believes and Jesus Christ and desires to be saved lives a life that will be examined closely by others: both by those who seek a good example to follow and by skeptics who search for hypocrisy and other flaws with which they will attempt to discredit the Lord’s teachings.  For, in this way, they let themselves off the hook of trying to live a virtuous life.  This is how we should understand the verse: “We are made a spectacle to the world and to angels and to men” (1 Corinthians 4, 9).  The Lord cautions: “Take care, then, how you hear.”  That is, Learn carefully what I am teaching you and observe me closely as a model for your lives.

“To anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.”  The Lord speaks of our faith here, which lies as the source for our preaching and living.  The one who exercises his faith through good words and deeds will, in effect, receive more faith — he will become stronger in it.  The one whose faith is casual will lose it altogether.  That one may think to himself that he is a Christian and may even have received the sacraments, but “faith without works is dead” (James 2, 26).

Let us then so practice the Faith that it appears bright and glorious to the eyes of those around us.