Did you read the news this week, a recent poll indicates that the United States is becoming less religious. People of the younger ages are turning from religion. One of the reasons this would be true is for decades a vicious lie has been taught in our churches and too many people believe it. The lie you might have been taught, that the point of religion is for us to learn how to be good so that we might go to Heaven, after all good people go to Heaven and bad people do not.The problem is that once we buy into that lie, then we lose our religion for we buy into the idea that we are good enough to go to Heaven. Or as the atheists teach, we do not need God to learn how to be good. Study the scriptures, they not teach our current understanding of good people go to Heaven and Bad to Hell. Yes, there is an understanding that when we love God our behavior will show it for our faith drives our works. But the truth is that as Christians our message is to be the light to the world that we may be witnesses to a truth that cannot be discerned alone.

Let us look at that for a moment. We use light for one reason, there is darkness. So if we turn on a flashlight or even light a candle during a power failure, we do that because there is darkness and we cannot navigate in the dark.

The candles we see here are representations of the light of Christ and the presence of Christ, they are not simply that God is present like he is a big teddy bear in a storm. They represent that all that is God is with us which is His truth and His light. If we do not have the light, then we walk in darkness.

If Jesus tells us that we are the light of the world and the salt of the Earth, which He does in Matthew, then you and I have a call to be like candles in the darkness.

This changes everything. Let me give you an example: Let’s imagine we are in a cave and there are two types of people in a cave one who believe there is nothing outside the cave and no way to leave the cave, the other saying there is something outside the cave a bigger world and there is a way out. Let us say that there is someone in the cave who is in his eighties and he says that as a boy there was a man who visited the cave from the outside and told of a door that would bring people to this brighter outside.

Those who believed and understood may do what they can to find a way to illuminate their way around in the darkness to find that door. It would not matter how good someone is, if he did not understand that there is an outside and a door to it, then he would never find it. However, those who would find it would be those who believed it existed.

This is what Jesus shows us. The difference is that by seeking that light who is Christ we must conform ourselves to His teachings through His Church in order to see the light, for it is a light of faith. Again, it would not matter how good we are, if we do not first believe in the door, we cannot find it. However, the way we find the door (which is a metaphor that Jesus also uses) is to follow his words and do His will, for He was giving us directions to the door which we see with the eyes of faith.

Now if you understand that, then you understand who you are. You are God’s people who not only are seeking the way out of the cave which is the darkness of a teaching that says there is no God, you have a calling to lead others to that same door as well.

We will always be surrounded by people who will say to you that there is not door, there is only the cave and there is only this darkness and there is nothing beyond the cave. Do note, that there is reasoning is the same as those who said that the world was flat. “I do not see any door or light, therefore, it does not exist.” However, the desire to find a way out of the cave is just as much a sign that there is a way out as if the door was in front of us. Jesus is the way out of the cave.

So God calls you and I at our baptisms to be those who lead people to understand the truths of that which is beyond our ability to see. Without you, then people live in darkness.

As Catholics we believe that the Bible speaks to us more than just the literal words. So the story of Sodom and Gommorah, like that of creation, is also something that speaks to us prophetically more than historically. What does the story warn. Those cities turned so evil that the surrounding communities complained to God that this evil was spreading into their own societies. How did they turn evil? They cast the righteous from their midst and all that was left was the darkness of error for they cast out the light.

We have a calling at our baptism which we solidify at our Confirmation and commit to everytime we receive the Eucharist to live as people of the light, to bring Christ’s message to the world through living our lives. This is not a school on how to be good enough to get to Heaven, it is a vocation to be people of light to those who live in darkness.

This Sunday is a day between the Ascension and Pentecost, it is a Sunday that we stand waiting for the next stage of God’s salvation plan, where in the Holy Spirit, He moves the light from a handful of people in a small part of the world to a large group of people to the whole world. You are part of that large group and you living your life as Christ has called you to live it is not only your ticket to Heaven as much as your bringing light, to those who otherwise would live in darkness.

Know that there will be naysayers and others who will complain that there is no God, there is no light, there is no door outside of the proverbial cave. However, your vocation is to communicate and persevere in that communication that indeed there is. Next week, we talk about the Holy Spirit leading the way.

God bless you,