Salt has a bad reputation nowadays. My doctor warns me that too much salt leads to heart and kidney problems, to painful kidney stones, something I’ve experienced, and to high blood pressure.
I’m sure my doctor would like us to keep the salt shaker locked up in the rectory locked up in the rectory safe.
Thanks to processed foods, we can’t eliminate salt from our diet. But even if we could, it’s a bad idea. Salt promotes healthy hydration and electrolyte balance, which we need for our organs to work properly. And too little salt can lead to low blood pressure.
In Jesus’s time, there was no need to debate the pros and cons of salt. It was a godsend—used not only for seasoning but for preserving food. Keep in mind there was no refrigeration of any kind: salt preventing many things from spoiling.
So the Lord picked an image that all his listeners understood. Their food was flat, dull or even unsafe without salt.
But let’s unpack that image a bit more. The author one of my favourite book of homilies, Father John Jay Hughes, points out that even a small amount of salt can make a big difference. We, the followers of Jesus, though small in quantity, are to be “that ingredient in the world that makes all the difference in life’s quality.
“People need not notice our presence. But they should notice our absence.” [Proclaiming the Good News: Homilies for the ‘A’ Cycle, p. 106.]
The image of light is even more powerful. To understand that, all we have to do is look at two Gospel verses side by side. Today, in Matthew’s Gospel, we heard Jesus say “You are the light of the world.” But in John’s Gospel, Jesus says “I am the light of the world.” [Jn. 8:12]
So which is it? Both, of course. Jesus is the world’s light, and we are called to let it shine.
Someone asked me how Canada’s Catholic TV network came to be called Salt+Light. Obviously there’s a reference to this morning’s Gospel, but the name was directly inspired by the theme of World Youth Day in 2002.
St. John Paul told young people in Toronto that just as salt seasons and improves the flavour of food, as followers of Jesus, they are called to “change and improve the ‘taste’ of human history.
Looking out at the crowd of youth gathered in front of him, the pope said “With your faith, hope and love, with your intelligence, courage and perseverance, you have to humanize the world we live in.”
That’s what it means—for all of us, young and old—to be the salt of the earth.
In timeless words, John Paul spoke of the power of light, saying “Even a tiny flame lifts the heavy lid of night. How much more light will you make, all together, if you bond as one in the communion of the Church!”
And if the need was great then, think what it is today. The darkness has advanced, not retreated since 2002.
It’s even truer now that the world our young people are inheriting “is a world which needs to be touched and healed by the beauty and richness of God's love. It needs witnesses to that love.”
“The world needs salt, the pope told Catholic youth. “It needs you - to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.”
Let me briefly move from the young to the old. I want to tell you about an experience I had last week. I attended the funeral service for Ruth Oliver Cummings, the grandmother of our parishioner Kyle Neilson and the great grandmother of his children. She died last month at 98.
Kyle’s grandmother was a Protestant Evangelical Christian. The eulogies at her funeral sounded in some ways like the Bible’s accounts of St. Paul’s missionary journeys or of events in the early Church recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, although there’s no possibility that St. Paul ever went zip-lining at any age, much less at age 94!
Ruth lived her life with a passion for Christ and his Gospel, and with a particular focus on sharing it with young people, which among other ways she did by supporting the Protestant movement called Young Life . I really can’t describe the extent of her commitment to evangelization and young people in the time we have this morning—her family and friends needed almost an hour on Thursday.
Outside of N.E.T. ministries and Catholic Christian Outreach, there's nothing quite like Young Life in our Church. But we do have our Catholic schools, which we're celebrating this week.
Catholic schools week is a time to pray for our young people, their teachers, and their families who are sacrificing to make a Catholic education possible. But it’s also time to remember that our Catholic schools have a mission to share Jesus with their students, and to invite and encourage them to be Christians with a passion for sharing him with the world, one person at a time.
So let me conclude with the words St. John Paul prayed for young people in 2002, praying them for Catholic youth today, and especially for those attending our Catholic schools:
O Lord Jesus Christ, keep these young people in your love. Let them hear your voice and believe what you say, for you alone have the words of life.
Teach them how to profess their faith, bestow their love, and impart their hope to others.
Make them convincing witnesses to your Gospel in a world so much in need of your saving grace.
Make them the new people of the Beatitudes, that they may be the salt of the earth and the light of the world!
Mary, Mother of the Church, protect and guide these young men and women of the Twenty-first Century. Keep us all close to your maternal heart. Amen.
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