When I was still young in the 1950s, there was an interesting show on our black and white TV sponsored by a Catholic religious order, the Paulist Fathers. While I don’t remember much about the show, I was captivated by and internalized the song with which they ended the program.
With a picture of a candle burning, a strong voice sang the following words: “If everyone lit just one little candle, what a bright world this would be.” Every once in a while, that one-line melody pops into my head.
This morning was one of those times. In a quiet house on a rainy Sunday morning, I was reading a short piece on “The Light of Humankind” by one Rocco Errico in the current issue of my Science of Mind magazine. Scholar Errico has two degrees (Th.D and Ph.D) and is founder and president of the Noohra Foundation in Smyrna, Georgia.
Noohra is the Aramaic word for “light,” one of Dr. Errico’s favorite languages. He tells me that in the northern Galilean dialect that Jesus spoke, the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:14—“you are the light of the world,”—came out as “Aton enon noohreh dalma.
He (Rocco) explained that “Jesus was telling his disciples and the people that they were the carriers of the light of God on Earth.” He then noted that the Aramaic for “world” was alma and that alma had other meaning as well. It could refer to “age, life-time, eternity, everlasting.”
As it happens, noohra also has other meanings. It can mean “sight, brilliance, brightness, enlightenment.” What a nice but challenging way to look at ourselves. It does, however, remind me of a line of Charlie Brown’s in the Peanuts cartoon strip: “There is no heavier burden than a great potential.”
Is it possible for us to enter into and live up to the truth that we are indeed God’s messenger’s on earth? Can we identify and somehow grasp in our heads and our hearts that we do have access to the mind and heart of Jesus and that, as Brian Clardy said in yesterday’s First Presbyterian sermon on Facebook, Jesus is only telling us what the Father (Abba) has told him to say?’
All I can say is that I struggle with this—and I hope that you will struggle with it as well.
7-13-20