Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Last Sunday, we heard Our Lord’s “Inaugural Address,” beginning His extensive Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. He asked His followers to look into themselves, to see if they can find the Presence and the Grace of God in the form of unexpected blessing in the midst of adversity.

This was given as a somewhat passive exercise of introspection in order to form the bedrock for today’s more active exercise containing a mandate to move forward into the world so in need of God’s Grace and Blessing. 

Lest His disciples think themselves not up to the task, He employs simple, easily-understood images such as salt and light, in order to teach them that they’ve got what it takes to bring the world to Christ and the heavenly kingdom. They merely need to realize their proper character and move it forward. This provides a practical application for living the Beatitudes lest the previous lesson remain in the realm of the esoteric and the poetic.

Using these two images of salt and light, the Lord teaches that everyone needs to strive for personal holiness and for the burgeoning holiness of others. These images of salt and light, as old as mankind itself, reflect the Old Testament understanding of Law and Covenant now given new meaning and fuller dimension in the Person and Teaching of Jesus Christ.

Let’s look more closely at these two images, so common and taken-for-granted in our time, in order to interpret what Our Lord is saying to us today.

Salt

As we know, in ancient days,  salt was used not only to season food, but to preserve it from corruption. In this latter significance, salt symbolized the permanence of the Law of God as well as the permanence of His Covenant.

Although, through sin, we might bring corruption into and against our observance of God’s Law, and thus threaten our adherence to our Covenant relationship with him, God’s fidelity would maintain them both and keep them viable. In our attempts to fulfill God’s Law by living the Beatitudes, we bring a divine “flavor” to human realities, and help to preserve ourselves and the world as a whole from further corruption.

In our attempts to live the Beatitudes and become salt for the world, we can become savory signs of God’s Presence in the world, for, as an ancient document comments: “As the soul is to the body, so are Christians in the world.” The life of the soul, in tune with the Beatitudes, can change the world in ways, perhaps imperceptible in the beginning, but, somewhat like the essence of ordinary salt, into what God wills for His people, and all of Creation, a reflection of His holiness in the essence of their being.


Light

The point is especially well made in this wintry season of darkness, that we need light for our sense of well-being, and to find our way not only through the house, but through life, with its inherent darkness of weakness and sin.

In the Old Testament, this essential light was understood to be God Himself, as we heard in today’s Responsorial Psalm: “Light shines forth in the darkness for the upright.” Now Jesus is saying that His disciples should bring God’s light into a world fraught with darkness.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux spoke of this when she wrote: “It seems to me that this lamp is the symbol of charity: it must shine not only to fill with joy those whom we love best, but for all in the house.”

In the documents of the Second Vatican Council, these symbols of salt and light take on an outward-moving dimension: Salt is seen as evangelization. Light is seen as sanctification. It says: “The Laity have countless opportunities for exercising the apostolate of evangelization and sanctification. The very witness of a Christian life, and good works done in a supernatural spirit, are effective in drawing men to the Faith, and to God, and that is why the Lord has said: ‘Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.’”

The Prophet Isaiah speaks of light replacing gloom in two practical ways. First, by ridding ourselves of unkindness, especially in the realm of judgmentalism, gossip, rumor-mongering and malicious speech. Then, in living the Corporal Woks of Mercy, feeding the hungry mentioned especially, thus making evangelization and sanctification of the world realistic and attainable. So, if we are able to internalize the Beatitudes and externalize the Sermon on the Mount, then salt and light become not simply images of Christian life but invitation to truly and actually live that life. 

This movement, first of internalizing the Lord’s Teaching, then of manifesting His love and presence in the world becomes not only our vocation, but, in a very dynamic way, our proper identity.