In The Spotlight

02-05-2023Weekly Reflection

Our society loves celebrity. We love it so much that we’ve created a whole social class of them, people who are celebrated: celebrities. The place we often find them is “in the spotlight.” But in one of His usual twists on our usual assumptions about what is right and good, Jesus today informs us that we shouldn’t be in the spotlight, we should be the spotlight.

Paul understood this when he was writing to the Corinthians. He did not come to them as a celebrity, as the one to be celebrated; he came weak, fearful, and trembling so that the light of the gospel, and not his own, might shine. Isaiah gives us a bit more information about whom we should shine our light upon: the hungry who need to be fed, the homeless who need shelter, the oppressed who need a voice. Our own little spotlight, then, becomes the very light of the dawning day, as we build lives and communities that live in charity and justice.