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Is Your Lighthouse Reflecting God’s Love?

Ken & Cheryl Nagle

We were at Mass 4-5 years ago and the young, Hispanic Priest saying Mass gave a homily that still sticks with us. It caused immediate reactions and continues to do so. We want to share it with you.

It seems that this priest was in Central America on the coast for some meetings, rest and recreation. The village he was in was on the side of a bay. After a long day he went to stroll on the beach late that evening. It looked up to see a light house spinning around. As it spun he noticed across the bay that another light house was reflecting light out see as the one in village was. He noted that they seemed to be in unison. The next night he went out and noticed that the lighthouse in the village was still working but the one across the bay was not. He wondered to himself whether the power had gone out on the other side of the bay or what. The following night he noted that the other lighthouse was still out. The next night, though, it was back on and in sync with the one in the village.

Curious, he decided to ask one of the locals about the two lighthouses. He asked if the other side of the bay had experienced a long power outage. The local said no. So he asked what happened to the power for the lighthouse over there. The local responded that there was no power over there. That lighthouse has only a mirror, he added. The light source for that lighthouse was the light from the village’s lighthouse as it swung across the mirror. So, the priest asked the local what happened to the mirror. The response was that somehow the mirror got moved and wasn’t set directly towards the village lighthouse, thus did not reflect the light.

The priest reflected on this and thought how appropriate this was to our faith journey. He saw the village lighthouse as God and the lighthouse with the mirror as we, God’s people. Our sole task is to reflect God’s love to everyone around us but, to do so, we must keep ourselves oriented toward Him.

This story, in and of itself, could stop here and still be a great lighthouse story. We (mostly Ken) have continued to reflect on this. Today we see this message in an even greater light. It is the story of “we” marriages. We must stand side by side and reflect God’s light and love to the world. It is our task in Worldwide Marriage Encounter.

If one of us in the marriage turns away from God and chooses the world of today’s message, then our light shines much less strong. If we both turn away and choose career, golf, sailing or dozens and dozens of other worldly distractions and stop reflecting God’s love, then our world is much less bright and much less likely to change. If both of us are not reflecting God’s love, those around us cannot see God.

In much the same way, if we both become too reflective in the inward choice of turning away from God, we also are not reflecting God’s love. We see this often in our effort to do work separately for our church. It is not that this is bad but more that it takes away from us reflecting God’s love as two united as one, standing together and adding our love to God’s reflected love.

Further, are we getting turned into our family because the modern world says we are a bad parent because we don’t spend 100% of our time focused on our kids? This isn’t to say we shouldn’t spend quality time with our children but is that done because it is quality time or are we sitting on the sidelines hoping they’ll hit a home run or score a goal or whatever? Is that truly quality time and are we there together?

God calls us to stand side by side as a married couple reflecting His great love for all. We are to add our own love to the mix and shine brightly. That is our call as a sacrament. That is the call this priest gave us when he told us about his experience in Central America and the two lighthouses.

If you’ve gotten this far, we love you and trust that you will continue to inspire by being that reflection of God’s love spoken above. You light our world.

Click here for a printable version (PDF, 8KB)