“You are the light of the world”: The apostles and the believers after them derive this light from Christ who described Himself being the light of the world (John 9: 5). It is normal for our light to shine before people so that they see our good deeds and glorify God that gave us this light.
You should be like Jerusalem that is located on a mountain. This might mean that the Church that you form, as a whole, is a light for the whole world.
We don’t do good deeds for our glory but for our heavenly God to be glorified. We enlighten people through the love that exists in us and love has no pride as Paul says. People see those good deeds, and the person that has performed these deeds must ascribe them to God.
After that, the Lord says: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets”. Jesus doesn’t cancel the Holy texts because he attracts us to the righteousness found in them. In fact, the Church cancelled the sacrifices of blood and therefore we call the Liturgy “the non-bloody sacrifice”. Christ wants people to see the purpose of the Law and prophets which is righteousness.
We have kept the prophets of the Old Testament in Church because they talk about Christ and prophesy about His coming. We keep them in order to indicate their purpose: Christ.
Yes, “not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished”. The Law, in its literal sense, disappears and this means that we don’t preserve its restrictions like not eating some kinds of meat such as pork. However, the purpose of the Law is to lead us towards God. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”. These words are found in the prologue of the Gospel of John and show us that, through Christ, we have reached the purpose of the Law which is grace and truth.
Jesus takes away the old literal sense but not the true meaning which is the unity with God through His Son and especially through His death and resurrection.
The conclusion of all of this is that “whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven”. He who exists through Christ’s grace and is sanctified in Church would work through righteousness that he obtained from faith, hope and love. All of these result in good deeds. Jesus adds teaching to practice. Practice itself is a kind of teaching by example. However, there is also teaching by words. This is what the Lord referred to by sending his disciples to preach; and Paul also referred to this by considering “teachers” a category that has received the gift of teaching from the Holy Spirit in his first epistle to the Corinthians and his epistle to the Romans.
Surely, the ignorant isn’t the same as the teacher and that God saves both. However, the Lord has made a great stature for teaching theology in his Church because theologians preserve faith and defend it in their writings.
Theology isn’t limited by its teachers in theological faculties; whoever teaches the orthodox faith in Church or in theological schools’ classes, at any level, would be teaching the young and old the truths of faith. Fathers and mothers also carry something from Christian education and teach it to their children. Journals, religious articles and archdiocese bulletins also deliver faith.
This teaching isn’t only for the priest. Every one of us is invited to receive faith and give it to his surrounding even if the priest was the responsible teacher through preaching in the Divine service. The important thing is for a Christian to be, through his teaching and practice, compatible with the Holy Spirit and with the orthodoxy of doctrine.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “المؤمنون نور العالم” –Raiati 29- 15.07.2012
