Salt and Light
In today’s Gospel Jesus says to his followers (and therefore to us) “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world”.
Perhaps, like me, you have many days when you don’t feel particularly salty or bright! But Jesus speaks of it here as though it is a simple statement of fact; you ARE…!
I imagine that a piece of salt doesn’t often sit thinking about whether it is salty enough and how to become saltier. Saltiness is the very essence of it’s being! It is only in unusual and detrimental circumstances that salt will lose its flavour.
We, too, are salty in our very essence if we are living out our baptism through prayer and love, allowing God’s Spirit to transform us. People will “taste” a difference in us, just by experiencing us being who we are! There are circumstances, Jesus warns us, which can cause us to lose our saltiness and our brightness. If we “lose our flavour” it is time to ask some fundamental questions about how to open ourselves to God more deeply.
I am reminded here of St Catherine of Sienna’s encouragement to “be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.” If we are focussed on cooperating with God we will be salty and bright!
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Salt of the earth reminds me of Fr Louis Breslin. He was a Naval Chaplin when Bishop Morgan was around. Bishop Morgan loved the way Fr Breslin crossed his forehead, lips and heart at the Gospel reading. Not like shooing flies away, he meant every movement. Fr Breslin was salt, at his funeral Mass, he was known as a Priest of the small things, very caring and considerate. Like St Thereses small way.
Before Fr Breslin died he told me something i will never forget. We must cooperate with God, He needs us, we need Him.
In a modern scientific, materialistic world we often forget the basics. God created water and salt. Jesus was baptised in water and and like salt, He is the electrolyte, we move toward Him or destruction. Before and after Fatima our Mother Mary has constantly asked for her beads to be used like an electric cable. To chain the devil and energise faith, hope and charity.
Childish, hmmmm, Jesus spoke highly of simplicity and usually speaks through children, not scholars. Our God turned up in Bethlehem, not in a Synagogue or Rome.
God bless the humble, he always does.
What a lovely article to bring hope to us all in the time before the plenary Council