On the Feast of Tabernacles, according to John’s Gospel. Jesus claims to be the light of the world and living water, two symbols of this feast. His enemies fiercely dispute his claims. “As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just…” Jesus says. (John 5:30)
In our reading about Susanna, adultery is not the only issue to be judged. Gender injustice is also on the table. Jewish religious law said if a woman were caught in the act of adultery and two men witnessed it, she could be stoned to death or strangled. The system obviously led to abuse; two witnesses paid by a vengeful husband might give false testimony and have her stoned to death. The story of Suzannah tells us two men could also plot a rape. The woman becomes a victim and the man avoids blame.
Two old men, judges with lots of power, think they can do anything they want. Abuse of power, combined with lust, is still behind many of our sexual crimes today. It’s found in the workplace, in politics, in the celebrity and sports world, and also unfortunately in the world of religion.
Suzannah refuses to give in to their advances, and she finds a champion in Daniel who faces up to the powerful men. Her story calls for standing up for truth and fighting against abuse of power wherever we find it.
Lord, let me judge others fairly with your eyes, your heart and your mind. Help me work for a world that is right and just. Give me the grace to know myself.
You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house.
Matthew 5:14-15
Jesus, the light of the world, purifies hearts and illuminates minds in the truth, restoring lost sons and daughters to the Father. Every child redeemed by the Lamb of God is a Christ-bearer and therefore, a light-bearer, but from where does the light shine?
In a reading by St. Maximus the Confessor, he identifies the lamp of the parable with Jesus Christ and the lampstand as Holy Church. As the Head and the Body are inseparable, the lamp and the lampstand together illumine the “house, which is the world,” filling all people with divine knowledge.
In an age of profound skepticism and disappointment in the institutional Church, St. Maximus’ vision challenges us to lift up our eyes to the mountain of the Lord (Zechariah 8:3), praying to become one with Christ collectively in the communion of saints. For it is by the virtuous lives of the saints that a world parched for mercy and truth is drawn to the Church as its Mother.
In the old covenant, “the word was hidden under the bushel, that is, under the letter of the law,” veiling the eternal light. In the new covenant of grace in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Christified saints become living letters of the law inscribed not on tablets of stone but on hearts of flesh, vivified by the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:3).
Bereft of the lamp, the lampstand is dark and empty—a tomb of death and despair. Catholics experience the effects of the empty lampstand in the Church on Good Friday to Holy Saturday every year when the Blessed Sacrament is removed from the sanctuary. At dawn on Easter morning, with millions of candles piercing the darkness around the world, the Body of Christ rises with its Head from the empty tomb, joyfully singing “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”
From an inquiry addressed to Thalassius by Saint Maximus the Confessor, abbot
The light that illumines all men
The lamp set upon the lampstand is Jesus Christ, the true light from the Father, the light that enlightens every man who comes into the world. In taking our own flesh he has become, and is rightly called, a lamp, for he is the connatural wisdom and word of the Father. He is proclaimed in the Church of God in accordance with orthodox faith, and he is lifted up and resplendent among the nations through the lives of those who live virtuously in observance of the commandments. So he gives light to all in the house (that is, in this world), just as he himself, God the Word, says: No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Clearly he is calling himself the lamp, he who was by nature God, and became flesh according to God’s saving purpose.
I think the great David understood this when he spoke of the Lord as a lamp, saying: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. For God delivers us from the darkness of ignorance and sin, and hence he is greeted as a lamp in Scripture.
Lamp-like indeed, he alone dispelled the gloom of ignorance and the darkness of evil and became the way of salvation for all men. Through virtue and knowledge, he leads to the Father those who are resolved to walk by him, who is the way of righteousness, in obedience to the divine commandments. He has designated holy Church the lampstand, over which the word of God sheds light through preaching, and illumines with the rays of truth whoever is in this house which is the world, and fills the minds of all men with divine knowledge.
This word is most unwilling to be kept under a bushel; it wills to be set in a high place, upon the sublime beauty of the Church. For while the word was hidden under the bushel, that is, under the letter of the law, it deprived all men of eternal light. For then it could not give spiritual contemplation to men striving to strip themselves of a sensuality that is illusory, capable only of deceit, and able to perceive only decadent bodies like their own. But the word wills to be set upon a lampstand, the Church, where rational worship is offered in the spirit, that it may enlighten all men. For the letter, when it is not spiritually understood, bears a carnal sense only, which restricts its expression and does not allow the real force of what is written to reach the hearer’s mind.
Let us, then, not light the lamp by contemplation and action, only to put it under a bushel—that lamp, I mean, which is the enlightening word of knowledge—lest we be condemned for restricting by the letter the incomprehensible power of wisdom. Rather let us place it upon the lampstand of holy Church, on the heights of true contemplation, where it may kindle for all men the light of divine teaching.
Reference
The passage from St. Maximus the Confessor can be found in the Office of Readings for Wednesday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time.
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