Bulletin Reflection for the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time - 9 February 2020 - St Jude Catholic Church - Pearl Mississippi

     Today, on the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, a few week before we start the holy season of Lent, we hear a part of the Sermon on the Mount in our Gospel today, as Jesus describes what we should strive toward in our life of discipleship.  According to Jesus, we are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. As disciples of Christ, we are to bring flavor and light to the world around us. 

Such images are probably very familiar to us as followers of Christ.  Jesus calls us to be a light in the darkness of our world.  He calls us to change the flavor of our world, to bring a perspective of faith no matter where we are in our lives. 

In the Church, we have talking about evangelizing the world and the community around us for a long time, but I feel like that in recent years, we have tried to take more concrete steps in the spirit of the new evangelization to which our popes and Church leaders have been calling us.  Here at St Jude, in the last couple of years, we have started a Spanish mass, we go out to Whitfield and the prisons an average of once a week after those ministries had been dormant for a long time, we have started a ministry for Millsaps College students, we have started hosting a regular Extraordinary Form Latin Mass, and we are just now restructuring our food bank to better meet the needs of the most needy in our community.  With ALPHA going strong in our parish for both adults and youth, we are hoping that the spirit of being light in the world is penetrating our parish in a lot of different ways. 

Last week, on February 5, we marked the anniversary of the death of Father Pedro Arrupe, who had been the Superior General of the Jesuits for many years, and who is considered their “second founder” based on the huge impact he had on that religious order.  This is a quote of his that really touched me:  “In life, have but one desire, only one — to love Jesus Christ with all your soul.  Let that be the one fixed idea of your entire existence.”  In respect to today’s Gospel, I see that we can be a true light in the world only if we have a personal relationship with Jesus and only in our lives are centered in him.  Then, and only then, can we pass the light on to others.