There’s a famous story about Rabbi who posed this question to his yeshiva students…When is there enough light in the world?  The first student answered…Rabbi there’s enough light in the world when it’s bright enough to see from a distance whether a stream of water is moving or standing still.  That’s not enough light…replied the Rabbi.  A second student jumped in…Rabbi there’s enough light in the world when it is light enough to tell the difference between an oak tree and a pecan tree.  That’s still not enough light explained the Rabbi.  A third student then suggested…Rabbi there’s enough light in the world when it is light enough to tell the difference between a sheep and a goat.  The Rabbi replied…no…that’s still not enough light.  So they all sat there waiting for the Rabbi to tell them.  There’s finally enough light in the world…the Rabbi said…when it is so bright that a person can look in the face of a complete stranger and see the face of a brother or sister.

236 times Light is mentioned in the bible.  We hear it from the very beginning when in the beginning God said let there be light.  Light is ever-present in the psalms…the Lord is my light and my salvation…even in darkness light dawns for the upright…in your light Lord we see light itself.  Daniel was one of the Old Testament prophets who could see because he was enlightened by God.  In the New Testament John tells us that in Christ there is no darkness at all.  Light is all over the letters of St. Paul.  Brothers and Sisters…be children of the light and do not let the darkness over take you.  St. Peter says that we are to walk in his marvelous light.    In our liturgies we’ve brought this image of Light into Baptism where we receive the Light of the Paschal Candle blessed at the Easter Vigil and processed into the darkness of the church so that the People of God can see.  At funerals we send our loved ones into the darkness of uncertainty with the light of the Paschal Candle standing at the head of the casket to show them the way.  Light is so integral to our Catholic identity that when non Catholics think of Catholics they immediately think of candles flickering in front of shrines.  And beyond the religious aspect of light…earth itself is doomed without light.  No plants no food no life without light.  It’s spiritual too.  And it’s the spiritual message of the parable of the Good Samaritan.  When our souls are in darkness we can’t see what God sees and wants us to see.  And when that happens we make poor decisions.
 
Think about your own life right now.  There’s no doubt that all of us…me included…we all know the right thing to do.  When we’re praying…connected at Mass…acting out of virtue…we can see so clearly and our decisions come so naturally and are always good and right and true.  Of course we want to feed those who have no food…we can see it right now so clearly…of course we want to support each other…the peace be with yous are so easy and so clear here at mass…of course we can see the Lord…I’m about to hold Him up for all of you to see at the elevation of His Body and Blood.  But what happens when we leave this place and get back out there and come into contact with the Samaritans of our time?  The poor…the people lying in convalescent homes around our area…the homeless who just can’t seem to get their act together and come to the office asking for gas money to get to wherever it is they’re trying to get to?  What happens to our vision when we come upon them?  Or the black people or brown people or Asians…or the republicans or the democrats or the people who go to other churches up and down main street Belton…or the people from other countries wanting to make a better life right here in our country because theirs are either too dangerous or hopeless…or the people who don’t think like we think or act like we act or look like we look?  What happens to our vision then?  We can see so clearly here in this church…it’s quite different when we’re blinded by reality out there. 
God is light and God’s light in this world is meant…first and foremost…to help us see not just our own lives…but more importantly the faces of brothers and sisters around us.

That’s the fundamental meaning of “Christ the Light of the World”.  It isn’t just a charming nickname for Jesus…it’s fundamental to our very health as human persons.  If there’s no light we can’t see God…we can’t see ourselves…and we won’t be able to see each other.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is about light…a classic story…how many times have we heard it at mass in our lives…some of us two or three hundred times.   But I wonder if we’ve ever thought about this idea of Light as the theme of the parable.  The Priest.  The story doesn’t say that he failed because he was particularly hardened or mean or selfish or lacking goodness.  He didn’t stop because he couldn’t see…there wasn’t enough Light in his world for him to notice his brother down there in the ditch.  I don’t know what was clouding his vision.  Maybe he was just too busy with his job as a priest to see.  The Levite.  Too pre-occupied…his vision too crowded by the tasks of his day to actually see.  It doesn’t say that he was a bad person.  He just couldn’t see.  But the Samaritan…an outsider…someone who would have never been respected as much as a priest or as learned as a Levite…he could see.  The Light of Christ had penetrated his soul…it had pulled away the lenses from his heart’s eye and he could see a Truth so profound…so clear that he stopped.  That day there was enough Light for the Samaritan to see the face of his brother. 

This is our task…this is our Baptismal promise from that day when we received the Light of Christ and water cleaned the lenses of our hearts so we could see.  But life…like a car rolling down I-35…can have such a filthy windshield…pocked with dead bugs…bird droppings…and sometimes even cracks from rocks sprayed up by the busy rush of daily traffic.  And besides that…God’s light out there is bright and we instinctively reach for the sunglasses…multiple sun glasses to the point where at some point we can’t even see anymore.  We have to pull off the lenses of busyness…self-absorption…apathy…sometimes even sin so that we can see with the eyes of Christ.  That’s what the story is telling us.  What’s your vision like?  Can you even see the people around you…do you notice them?  How many times have we gotten in an argument with our closet loved ones and come to say…I’m sorry I didn’t know I did that to you…I couldn’t see.  It happens all the time even before we start trying to see the homeless…the poor…the elderly.  This gospel is about our vision…ask yourself…are you seeing the very same thing that Jesus is seeing? 

Pope John Paul II was once giving a talk on conscience…he said…Conscience is like God’s messenger…it commands things from us straight from God himself.  Thus it can be said that conscience is God’s vision of things penetrating the depth of man’s soul.  Moral Conscience never closes us in on our own solitude…but rather it opens us up to the call of God…to the voice of God.  This is the very place of human dignity…says JPII…the conscience is the sacred place where God actually speaks to us and shows us the way. 
That day on that road from Jericho to Jerusalem…God shed his light on that Samaritan man…that day God spoke to him through his enlightened conscience. 

The question for you and me is this…can our conscience even see God’s people around us that might be broken down and injured in the ditches of life?  Is there enough of God’s light in our own hearts to shine on the faces of our brothers and sisters in need.  It’s challenging I know…when’s the last time you’ve just stared into the eyes of someone else.  Even with people we know…it’s so powerful that we can hardly handle it for a few seconds.   That’s how we know we’re seeing what God sees…it’s powerful.   And when we see with the light of God…it changes everything in our conscience.