Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 9 of Season 6 for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time: Jan. 22, 2023. Our Gospel reading is from Matthew Chapter 4, verses 12 - 23.
When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that what had been said through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled:
Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death light has arisen.
From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him.
He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him. He went around all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people.
The Gospel of the Lord
“From Darkness to Light and Truth” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut
The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. The people in darkness have seen a great light. As we listen to those words, they may have the power to bring us to a place of comfort and assurance. There's something attractive about that darkness and light language. That somehow, things for humanity have been illumined or brought to a better place. We may even find ourselves reflecting on other things that Isaiah said when he speaks about the lion and the lamb lying down together in God's vision of peace and harmony for all of God's people. All of which bring us to a very quiet, peaceful place, and we're attracted to that language. We're attracted to the imagery. It hits us deep within.
People who have been in darkness have seen a great light. The language used is very important for us understanding this relationship of darkness to light. And the bottom line is, is that being the human beings we are, even though we see the light, even though the light has been brought to us in Jesus Christ, doesn't mean that we always want the light. We don't always want the light. It's there. We believe it's there. We know it's there, but we don't want it here. Because sometimes it's easier to stay in the darkness. It's easier to close the blinds and just remain anonymous in my own little fabricated world. So, just because we see the light doesn't mean we want the light.
You know, darkness really is a place where there's a lack of clarity or ignorance. We don't see the truth as the truth is meant to be seen. We don't see the reality of who we are, of who God is and what all of this business called life really means. Because in the light is the depth of understanding, not ignorance. In the darkness, it's easy to clinging to illusions. Illusions we have about ourselves. What other people have told us we are. What our past history has done to us. Very easy to cling to these falsehoods. And in clinging to these falsehoods, we find ourselves somewhat powerless, rivaling in our victimhood, we just find ourselves spinning the wheels, doing the same things in the same way, making the same errors, the same patterns of behavior over and over again.
In the darkness, our worlds become very small. They become very self-focused. It's all about what's happening in my life, what my needs are, what my insecurities are, what my fears are, what I'm dealing with, and what's important to me right now. In the world of darkness, we walk through life with a very small picture of importance. It's the everyday pieces of my life that matter most, and the rest is put aside.
But in the world of light, the small picture becomes big, and we begin to see the interconnectedness of it all. We begin to see how God sees the relationship I share with my brothers and sisters and the greater hope to which all of God's children are called. The greater hope of God's triumph over sin and death, which gives us the ability to move on and forage ahead with courage. It is this big picture that takes the focus off of my sometimes petty concerns and sees my life in solidarity with my brothers and sisters on the other side of the planet. People whom I don't even know and people I've never seen. The people that I know are struggling with much more than I'm struggling with here, and that their concerns and their cares are my concerns and my cares because their concerns and cares are God's concerns and care.
The darkness becomes a place that takes us off the hook of responsibility. If I don't have to worry or I care not about the particulars of my life, then I don't have to be responsible for moving and forging ahead to anything else.
After all, entertaining our passions, our immediate needs and desires all feel a little bit better in the short term than having to delay our gratification. There's something very comforting about the easy fix, and so we stay in the darkness.
The bottom line is that we don't like the truth. Somewhere along the way, truth became our enemy. I'm not quite sure how that happened or even when it happened, but it most certainly happened. Truth is our enemy. We don't like speaking the truth, and we most certainly don't like hearing the truth. We don't like speaking the truth because we're often afraid of being rejected, maybe speaking out of place, putting ourselves, perhaps, in a position where I really shouldn't be or don't belong. And so we see things and we say nothing. All out of fear and self-preservation, and we don't like to hear the truth, either, when someone, out of love, wants to point something out to us, that is really something we need to look at or to examine or is something that has hurt us, we become defensive. We're afraid of hearing the truth because we don't want to be wounded. We don't want to be hurt. And we're afraid of being told that we need to change our patterns of behavior.
And so we have a problem with truth. We find it so difficult, in so many ways, not least of which is the truth of our lives and the fact that God has a particular design to things that are meant to be and that we have to sometimes leave the way we want to do things and conform to that bigger picture.
And so in the darkness, vice and sin reign supreme, especially the sin of apathy, of not caring, of not wanting to put the energy into anything other than what I can possibly manage one day at a time.
But yet, the world of light, the world of truth, directs us to virtue. Not only the virtues of faith, hope, and love but the more difficult ones. The ones that we have to work at that come at a price. Things like justice and fortitude and temperance and moderation. Words we don't even hear much in our world anymore, and maybe some of us are even hard-pressed to properly define them. But yet they are the door to the light, to the door to truth, and it's only through a habit of prayer and hard work, not sitting back and doing nothing, not wallowing in the mire of self-pity, not playing the "woe is me" game, but the hard work of doing business, of becoming a faithful follower of Jesus Christ requires hard work and a desire for the light, not a repulsion from it, a desire for truth, and all that goes with it.
Carl Yung, a great psychologist, said that I am who I choose to become. I am who I choose to become. Not what has been done to me. Not all of this stuff I've been robbed of, not all of the stuff that I think I was due, I choose to become. That's who I am. And so if I truly want the light in my life, if I wanted to accept Jesus Christ as the answer of truth, as the beacon of God's presence and love, then I have to make a conscious choice to bring that light into the darkness of my heart, to scatter all of the clouds and bring that vision of hope. Then we will find ourselves interiorly changing, and others will see an exterior change, both in how we prioritize our life, how we see the world, how we speak, and how we act. And by all of those things, we will become fishers of other people and bring them from the darkness into the light by the very quality of our lives. Darkness and light. It's a choice that must come through hard work and deep prayer, but the only way to truth.
Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.