THE WORD AND THE SAINTS
February 14, 2023: Remembering Saints Cyril, Methodius and ValentineGenesis 6: 5-8, 7: 1-5, 10; Mark 8: 14-21
Today we celebrate the memory of Saints Cyril and Methodius, brothers who evangelised the Eastern Europe. They translated the scriptures into the Slavic language and they are rightly called the apostles to the Slavs. They are called, along with Saint Benedict, the patrons of Europe, for the continent owes its Christian faith to saintly missionaries such as these.
Today, as part of a long standing tradition, people also remember st. Valentine, the bishop of a diocese called Terni in the vicinity of the present Rome - the patron of those in love!
In both these cases, what stands out is love, the love for the Lord and for the Good news that the Lord has for God's people. The saintly brothers, our of love for the Word, slogged to take it to the people and thus was born a whole community of faith who would become the light of the world and salt of the earth! Valentine seems to witness to the undying love of God which should animate human life, in order that one can become light and salt to those around!
The readings too invite us, as God's people to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth - a significant role the Lord assigns to us is to be the leaven of goodness, the yeast of the Reign. Today the Word warns us of the danger that we become the leaven of insincerity, compromises, mediocrity and hypocrisy. Even though we may not outwardly choose to be blatantly evil, we may live a life of double or multiple standards, a life of total discrepancy; that life would not only be unfit for Reign, it would be dangerously against the Reign.
May the life and example of the saints we remember today, make us leavens of love, light and salt to the earth, for the love of God and of God's people!