Dear Brothers and Sisters:
I hope you were able to pick one person to love this past week, and follow through on it. In the gospel we hear Jesus continue with his Sermon on the Mount, and he speaks of a Christian’s responsibility to the world. You are the salt of the earth…you are the light of the world…you are a city set on a mountain.
Christians are called not only to be virtuous but to be salt, to add flavor to the world, and to transform it. Salt is effective when it dissolves. When the salt loses its taste it becomes insipid, sophomoric, a wise fool. In Latin, insipidus means one who no longer knows (who he is). A thing is wisest when it is most fully itself and keeps within its nature; the same for beauty. Lady Gaga is much more beautiful as a brunet, her natural color. What color will she be tonight? A foolish person forgets to be who he should be, and no longer has his proper flavor. Salt when it goes bad is hopeless.
A Christian heightens the quality of life and makes it more palatable, more nourishing, or he has no reason for being. Salt is not for itself, cannot be its own end. It serves a humble yet somehow indispensable purpose. Nothing can substitute it. Insipid Christians have forgotten the salt placed on their tongues, which was part of the old rite of Baptism.
Jesus uses another image, a city set on a mountain, which is the Church. These cities were the way that people journeyed centuries ago by seeing these landmarks from a long ways off. A city was placed there by God to watch and to be watched. A city on a hill cannot hide, everything is seen. An older friend of mine who was out of the Church for many decades died a holy death yesterday, and she looked really beautiful. Her family, most of who no longer believe, was struck by her abandonment in the hands of God with a very painful stomach cancer. She often refused the morphine and offered the pain to God for others. Yesterday, she went home to her Father. Through the good works of Christians Christ is made present again. She made God visible to her family and friends these last few days.
Often with light we want to receive it rather than provide it for others. A Christian ought to be light for those around him/her. The light comes from Christ. You lose it when it is not communicated. “What the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world,” says an ancient Letter to Diognetus.
The lamp referred to in the gospel is a portable lamp, how poignant. It is moved by the hand of God. Allow yourself to be moved about by Christ, as he sees fit, as this woman was who died yesterday. She went to be a missionary in Oregon and then to Boston and then wherever she was needed. The house may not need to be lit up all at once, but according to the needs of the moment, now in the kitchen, now in the dining room, now in the bedroom.
Christ has kindled the light, not you or me. Allow the Lord to choose where it will shine, and when.