1st Reading – Isaiah 58:7-10
Thus says the LORD:
Share your bread with the hungry,
shelter the oppressed and the homeless;
clothe the naked when you see them,
and do not turn your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!
If you remove from your midst
oppression, false accusation and malicious speech;
if you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday.
In our first reading, the prophet Isaiah addresses those who have returned to the Holy Land from exile in Babylon, challenging them to rethink what genuine faithfulness looks like.
Thus says the LORD: Share your bread with the hungry,
Literally, “break your bread” (cf. Acts 2:46; Mark 6:41; Mark 14:22), which evokes intimate, personal solidarity. The image is not of giving leftovers or outsourcing charity, but of sitting at the same table, sharing one’s own sustenance.
shelter the oppressed and the homeless; clothe the naked when you see them,
The Hebrew emphasizes direct involvement: the outcast is to be brought into one’s own house, and the naked are to be clothed whenever encountered.
These concrete works of mercy anticipate Christ’s teaching in Matthew 25, where final judgment hinges on such acts of love.
and do not turn your back on your own.
The Hebrew phrase here is mi‑b’sarkha lo titʿallam: “Do not hide yourself from your own flesh.”
In other words, do not avert your eyes from the suffering of those who are “your own flesh” — not just relatives, but fellow image-bearers of God.
This vision from Isaiah is not a generic call to charity but a summons to embody God’s justice in concrete acts of solidarity and restored communion.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
The tone shifts from command to promise.
When God’s people practice mercy, divine light becomes visible — both to those helped and to the wider community.
and your wound shall quickly be healed; your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
These blessings evoke the Exodus: God leading and guarding his people.
Works of mercy open the way for healing, restoration, and divine protection.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!
This passage is part of a larger arc in Isaiah 58, which begins with the returned exiles asking God: Why do we fast, and you do not see it? Why do we afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?
God answered through Isaiah by showing the Israelites how they had substituted empty religious practices for loving treatment of their fellow human beings.
Here, Isaiah proclaims that when they return to authentic love of neighbor, they will again experience God’s nearness.
If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech;
This second set of commands widens the scope from material needs to social sins. “Oppression” is a broad term that includes economic exploitation, political injustice, and interpersonal harm.
True worship requires dismantling these patterns.
if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.
Isaiah is speaking to a people weighed down by discouragement and steeped in anguish. His counsel is paradoxical: the path out of darkness is to attend to the darkness of others.
No matter how limited our resources, we always have some kind of “bread” to give: time, compassion, presence, material help. In Catholic teaching, this reflects the mystery that charity transforms both giver and receiver, drawing all into God’s light.
The theme of light resonates with our gospel reading: when the wealthy share until it costs them, and the poor share their trust in God, the world becomes transparent to God’s glory.
2nd Reading – 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
When I came to you, brothers and sisters,
proclaiming the mystery of God,
I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom.
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you
except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling,
and my message and my proclamation
were not with persuasive words of wisdom,
but with a demonstration of Spirit and power,
so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom
but on the power of God.
This week we continue our reflection on 1 Corinthians, which will carry us through these weeks of Ordinary Time until Lent begins.
In today’s reading, Saint Paul reflects on how he first preached to the Corinthians, emphasizing not eloquence or worldly wisdom but the power of God at work through human weakness.
When I came to you, brothers, proclaiming the mystery of God,
The “mystery of God” refers to God’s saving plan, once hidden and now revealed in Christ. As Paul makes clear earlier in the letter (1 Corinthians 1:18-25), this mystery is centered on Jesus Christ and, paradoxically, on the cross.
Note: Some ancient manuscripts read “testimony” instead of “mystery,” emphasizing the act of witness rather than the hidden plan revealed.
I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom.
Corinth was deeply shaped by Greek culture, where skilled rhetoric and philosophical sophistication were highly prized. Paul deliberately distances his preaching from this cultural expectation, underscoring that the Gospel is not another school of human wisdom (sophía).
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ,
Paul does not want the Corinthians’ faith to depend on a preacher’s personality or skill, but on a direct encounter with Christ himself.
and him crucified.
The crucified Messiah defies both Jewish hopes for power and Gentile ideals of wisdom. The cross reveals the heart of the Christian mystery: God accomplishes salvation through what appears, by human standards, to be weakness and failure.
I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling,
Paul’s own demeanor mirrors the apparent weakness of the crucified Christ. “Fear and trembling” expresses reverent awe before God and a deep awareness of human frailty, an attitude Paul commends elsewhere (cf. Philippians 2:12). It also reflects the real dangers he faced in Corinth, including opposition and violence (cf. Acts 18:5-17).
Was Paul really afraid of danger? Yes, he was, for even though he was Paul, he was still a man. This is not to say anything against him but rather about the infirmity of human nature. Indeed it is to the credit of his sense of determination that even when he was afraid of death and beatings, he did nothing wrong because of this fear. Therefore those who claim that Paul was not afraid of being beaten not only do not honor him, they diminish his greatness. For if he was without fear, what endurance or self-control was there in bearing dangers? [Saint John Chrysostom (392 AD), Homilies on the First Epistle to the Corinthians 6,2]
and my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
The effectiveness of Paul’s preaching came not from rhetorical technique or philosophical argument, but from the action of the Holy Spirit.
The Corinthians’ faith, therefore, rests securely on God’s power rather than on the skill or charisma of a human messenger.
Gospel – Matthew 5:13-16
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You are the salt of the earth.
But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?
It is no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
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.
Just so, your light must shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds
and glorify your heavenly Father.”
Today’s gospel reading is a continuation of the Sermon on the Mount. After teaching with the Beatitudes about striving for personal sanctification (which we heard last week), Jesus now turns outward, urging his followers to foster holiness in others.
He does this with the vivid and familiar imagery of salt and light, emphasizing the visible and transformative effect of a life lived in fidelity to God.
Jesus said to his disciples: “You are the salt of the earth.
In the ancient world, salt was precious and highly valued. It was traded along with gems and gold, and the Romans thought so much of salt that part of a soldier’s pay was a ration of salt, a practice that led to the word “salary.”
Throughout history, salt has been used to preserve food and impart flavor. Metaphorically, Jesus’ disciples are to function as salt for the world: preserving it from moral decay and lending flavor to life.
Christians are meant to be a quiet but real influence for good — steady, life-giving, and distinct. In a weary world, they are to be signs of hope and joy rooted in the risen Christ.
But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
Jesus uses a rhetorical question to provoke reflection. What Jesus suggests is impossible: Salt cannot lose its saltiness. It is of the essence of salt to be salty. Further, it is God who makes it salty, not human beings. If salt were seasoned with anything else, it would no longer be salt.
However, in Jesus’ day, common salt had all sorts of chemical impurities that could cause it to be useless. It was often put in a bag and lowered into soup or broth; as the pure salt was used up, the contents of the bag lost its flavor and only the dregs remained.
People, like the salt of Jesus’ time, can go flat.
You are the light of the world.
Light, too, is light because God has made it light. Light cannot lose its light and still be light.
In Matthew’s gospel, phōs means more than illumination; it evokes divine revelation and the radiance of God’s own presence. Elsewhere, Jesus applies it to himself as “the light of the world” (John 9:5), an eschatological title. Therefore, the metaphor is operating on two levels: it describes the nature of the disciples’ witness and identifies them as participants in the very eschatological mission promised to Israel.
A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.
Jesus reinforces the image of light with everyday examples.
A city built on elevated ground was visible from a great distance, serving both as a point of orientation and enabling the inhabitants to more easily defend themselves.
The Greek ou dynatai (“is not able”) is emphatic: it’s impossible for a city on a hill to be invisible.
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.
Likewise, a single clay oil lamp, common in the one-room homes of the time, was placed on a stand so its light could reach the entire household.
Light, like salt, was a precious resource meant to be used fully. Its purpose is not to draw attention to itself, but to illumine everything around it.
Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”
Jesus now makes the meaning explicit. Discipleship is inherently visible and missionary. Good works are not performed for self-display, but so that others may come to recognize and glorify God. Christians do not generate their own light; they reflect the light of Christ.
As salt seasons and light illumines because God has given them that nature, so disciples reveal God’s love and presence because this is the very nature of Christian life. The goal of their witness is always the same: that others may be drawn into communion with the Father.
This highlights the public nature of discipleship. It cannot be a merely private affair any more than light can.
As the Second Vatican Council teaches:
“Laymen have countless opportunities for exercising the apostolate of evangelization and sanctification. The very witness of a Christian life and good works done in a supernatural spirit have the power to draw men to the faith and to God; for the Lord says, ‘Even so let your light shine before men in order that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven’” (Apostolicam actuositatem, 6).
Connections and Themes
The weak things of the world. Again and again in these Sundays of Ordinary Time, we see how God accomplishes extraordinary things through ordinary people. Jesus was born in a stable and grew up as the son of a carpenter; some of the apostles were fishermen; Paul was a tent-maker. 9We ourselves are everyday people: store clerks, teachers, bus drivers, doctors, lawyers, engineers. If we rely on God rather than our own abilities, the Spirit and power of God will work wonders through us.
Unfortunately, we don’t always appreciate the significance of this in our own lives. Either we want to do spectacular things for God, or we ignore the possibilities for good that common things offer. If we could only realize that our ordinary lives are waiting to break forth with the brilliance of God, with the essence of the divine, we would embrace that life with enthusiasm and gratitude.
Transformed to transform. Before we are sent to act, we are first acted upon by God. Isaiah reminds us that light breaks forth when God’s saving justice has already taken root in a people, while Paul insists that faith rests not on human effort but on the power of God. Only then does Jesus say to his disciples: You are the light of the world.
Our ability to enlighten others and to serve those in need does not arise from moral effort alone, but from lives already reshaped by grace. Having been saved by God’s mercy, we are entrusted with making that mercy visible. What God has done in us becomes the source of what God does through us.
Take action! The Gospel tells us what to do (e.g., live for our light to shine), Isaiah tells us how to do it (feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc.), and Paul provides encouragement. We may wonder how we, who are not important people, can accomplish all these things. This is when Jesus’ metaphors are most powerful: in darkness, even a small match is illuminating; even a few grains of salt have flavor; even a small one-room house provides refuge from the elements. Paul carried out his mission “in weakness and fear and much trembling,” but he knew the power of God was at work through him, and he persevered.
Sunday Readings 