Sunday Meditation: Taste and See

On the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time in Year A, Jesus continues His Sermon on the Mount where He endows His followers with two very powerful symbols: salt and light.  Three years ago I embedded videos from Dr. Brant Pitre to provide the Old Testament significance of salt and light.  Of the various points of connection, the one that strikes me most significant is how salt was used in the Temple sacrifices as a link to the Covenant.  That is well worth going back to.

One lesson I picked up in reading about this passage that I don’t think any of the homilies below point out is that Jesus says “You are the salt” and You are the light.”  He doesn’t say you will become the salt or become the light. You are so now, and if I put on a theologian hat for a second, I would venture that one became salt and light at one’s baptism.  But notice He says that you can lose that flavor or you can dim that light.  How can one lose it?  By not doing good deeds in the world.

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

 

Jesus said to his disciples:

"You are the salt of the earth.

But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?

It is no longer good for anything

but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

You are the light of the world.

A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.

Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket;

it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house.

Just so, your light must shine before others,

that they may see your good deeds

and glorify your heavenly Father."

~Mt: 5:13-16

 

Fr. Tim Peters always has great explanatory homilies on these passages, but they tend to be very long.  This one is long but manageable, and as always thorough.

Fr. Tim:

“Salt should remind us that the new and eternal covenant in Christ is permanent, eternal and that we must continue to proclaim the same truth of the Gospel without compromise until Christ returns.  Moreover, through our words and actions others [through us] should encounter the love of Christ.”

That observation by Fr. Tim that the Menorah was always burning in the Holy of Holies is also a point of connection to Christ’s analogy.

 

I’m going back to Archbishop Edward Weisenburger for the pastoral homily.

 

The Archbishop points out words from the root salt: salad, salary, Salzburg.  There are others one could mention, cities such as Salisbury and Salerno, words such as saline, salacious, and salter. 

Archbishop Weisenburger:

“It is critical for us to note, too, that light does not exist for itself  any more than salt exists for salt.  Rather, light's purpose is to benefit others, to enable others to see. A lamp doesn't exist for itself. It exists so that others can see…This precisely is the ministry  Jesus entrusts to his disciples…And in doing so, they forever serve as a critical reminder that  any understanding of religion that views faith to be only a personal matter or a private  experience is a lie. No, our "saltiness" and our "light" originate in God but are given to us in order to draw others into community with us, because it is always within community that the fullness of the Gospel is found.”

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “Your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."

 

Well, the hymn is easy to pick this Sunday.  The archbishop has recommended one and I think it’s perfect, “Taste and See.”

 

Taste and see. Taste and see

the goodness of the Lord.

O, taste and see. Taste and see

the goodness of the Lord, of the Lord.

Faith Filled Friday: The Light in the Darkness

Two months ago (Vol 26, No. 10, Dec 2024 issue) Magnificat magazine had a super meditation in one of their post Christmas daily meditations.  It came from Caryll Houselander (1901 -1953), a British Catholic mystic who wrote in many Catholic publications.  I have mentioned her before and posted several posts on her book, The Way of the Cross.  You can read my posts concerning Caryll Houselander here.

Houselander’s insights are certainly devotional but I think her imagination can only be described as mystical.  This is no different.  What starts as an imagining of what the innkeeper must have felt when he turned away the pregnant Mary in Bethlehem turns into a contemplation of what we might all feel in our hearts when Mary and the hidden Christ-child enter us. 

 

I used to think how vexed the innkeeper would have been had he found out who it was that he had turned from his door, but I have learned to think that thankfulness would have overcome vexation, because after all he had the quiet, dark stable outside and he had lent that to the peasant girl in whom God was hidden.  Anyway it was Christ himself who chose the stable to be born in.  He still chooses unlikely places.  In each of us, just beyond the noise of our outward life, there is some place of silence and darkness, an emptiness where, if we have courage enough, we are alone with ourselves.  There is this place of silence, we know that God alone can content us, he alone is our peace.  It is in this sacred place of the soul that Christ wants to be born in us.  He wants to be born in us, that through us he may live in this world again and make it new with his new life…young with his youngness, little with his littleness, true with his truth, childlike with his childhood, pure with his purity.

 

It is in this dark place of our heart that Christ wants the light of the world to begin to burn and from its burning to radiate, until it shines back from the face of humanity.  Here it is that he wants the light to begin to shine in darkness and the life of the world to begin again…It is easy to see the world is wounded, hard to see that its healing begins in our own heart.  We say, repeatedly and rather pompously, that only a vital Christianity can save the world, but how do we imagine that a vital Christianity begins?...Vital Christianity means a living Christhood, a living Christ in man’s heart, and Christ can live in our hearts only if he is born in them individually.  He can be born in us only if we accept him in his own way, in littleness, humility, secret, hidden and small, to be fostered and loved in us, cradled and clothed in us, that he may grow naturally in our lives to his full stature.

 

It requires faith to believe that Christ will be born in man this Christmas, but much more faith to believe that he will be born in our heart, that he could fulfill his will of love in our own life, our life with so little radius for his light, so little journeying for his feet, so small a distance for his hands to reach.  (pp. 348-49)

“It is in this dark place of our heart that Christ wants the light of the world to begin to burn and from its burning to radiate, until it shines back from the face of humanity.”  Nothing starts without Christ lighting up our hearts. 

I think there is also a message for all those who criticize the Mass or the liturgical music or some other exterior form.

 

We say, repeatedly and rather pompously, that only a vital Christianity can save the world, but how do we imagine that a vital Christianity begins?...Vital Christianity means a living Christhood, a living Christ in man’s heart, and Christ can live in our hearts only if he is born in them individually.

Ultimately it’s Christ in us, in the hearts of the vast majority of people that will change the world, not some exterior form.  Ultimately it’s conversion of heart—that light being turned on—is what will bring the Kingdom of God.  You can’t force a conversion from exterior forms.  It is the interior that must accept Christ.

I love that last sentence with the image of the baby Jesus inside our hearts reaching out to touch us, to be picked up.

Sunday Meditation: The Salt of the Earth

It’s a simple Gospel this Sunday.  Jesus just gives us three images, salt, a city on a hill, and light.

 

Jesus said to his disciples:

"You are the salt of the earth.

But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?

It is no longer good for anything

but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

You are the light of the world.

A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.

Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket;

it is set on a lampstand,

where it gives light to all in the house.

Just so, your light must shine before others,

that they may see your good deeds

and glorify your heavenly Father."

~Mt 5:13-16

 

Simple and you so profound.  Let Dr. Brant Pitre explain it  in two videos.

 

 

These images have been used in a number of hymns.  Let’s give you one.

 

Go forth and be the light of the world!