5th Sunday, A
“You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”
Thus the Lord Jesus – after the Beatitudes, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount – describes to us, his disciples, our identity and our task in this world.
Let’s take the light first.
III Lent, C
One of the key words of Pope Francis’s pontificate, of which we just celebrated the twelfth anniversary, is accompaniment. In his vision, this is the work of the Church and her sacred ministers, to accompany the People of the God and the grace at work in them.
As a priest, this makes sense to me. Jesus is the Shepherd, not me. The Holy Spirit is the Teacher, not me. My job is to help people recognize, discern, and embrace what the Blessed Trinity is up to in their lives. That’s pastoral accompaniment.
However, though it is the duty of the Church and her sacred ministers to accompany the People of God, all this in service to how God himself accompanies us. We see this divine accompaniment in our readings today.
