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.