“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.”
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. The second metaphor is even bolder: you are the light of the world. Jesus applied this title to himself in John 8:12; now he applies it to his disciples — not because they generate their own light but because they reflect and transmit the light of the kingdom. Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6 describe Israel's calling as a light to the nations; the disciples of Jesus inherit that vocation. A city on a hill is visible to everyone around it, drawing travelers and providing orientation. The disciples are not called to be a private devotional community but a visible community whose life together demonstrates what kingdom existence looks like.
Church Fathers on Matthew 5:14
As the doctors by their good conversation are the salt with which the people is salted; so by their word of doctrine they are the light by which the ignorant are enlightened.
But to live well must go before to teach well; hence after He had called the Apostles 'the salt,' He goes on to call them 'the light of the world.'
By the world here we must not understand heaven and earth, but the men who are in the world; or those who love the world for whose enlightenment the Apostles were sent.
Read all 26 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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