Dear Parish Family,

In the Gospel Reading of this Sunday, Jesus says that Christians are supposed to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. And he has harsh things to say about Christians who are dark and insipid. They’re fit for nothing except being trampled under-foot, he says. Given that sort of threat, who wouldn’t want to know what it means to be salt and light for the world?
Well, here’s something to consider. Salt and light share a funny characteristic. Each of them is discernible by our senses—we taste salt, and we see light—but neither of them is usually meant to be a direct or main object of our sense perception.  Nobody makes salt for dinner. We put salt on the meat, but the meat is the dinner. The meat tastes better if we salt it; and enjoying the meat, not the salt, is what we are after. Light is like this, too. We turn on a light not in order to look at the light, but in order to look at other things by means of the light.

So if a Christian is the light of the world, he/she is enabling the world to see something other than himself/herself. And what Jesus goes on to say makes it clear that this something else is in fact the Lord.  A Christian is to let his light shine in such a way that the people of the world glorify God. The worldly people couldn’t glorify God if God were in darkness for them. So a Christian’s life is to shine in such a way that what the people of the world see is the Lord. What this means is that if we do not shine, the world is darker. No one can take our place! If we don’t shine by living our faith and proclaiming it, the world is in darkness. Jesus seems aware that we may be tempted to hide our faith. We might repress it in our public lives, presuming that it has nothing to offer the “real” world of politics and economics. Or we may just keep it under a basket—a “private” matter that makes no difference to society.

The image of salt is similar. If a Christian is the salt of the earth, he/she makes something else appeal to the taste of the people of the earth. And that will be God too. The people of the world will savor the goodness of God when Christians are the salt of the earth. Another temptation lurks around. If we think that our faith really makes no difference in the “real” world, it goes flat. It has nothing special to offer the world. Having lost its special taste, it never changes culture. It just mimics it. Our first and only mission is to be a true and uncompromised Christian and everything else is commentary. You may be a great doctor, but if you don’t do it as a clear and visible Christian you are nothing. You may be a skilled social worker, but if you don’t do it as a Christian, you are good for nothing. Any non-believer can be socially useful as a doctor, sports hero, actor, lawyer, or social worker. But only a Christian can be a Christian. If you don’t do “job one” you are nothing! If you get your kids every good thing, send them off to college, paid in full, but do not bring them to Christ and be a Christian witness to them, you are good for nothing. Any parent can give their kids material things, but only a Christian can give them Christ. Quite unsettling? Well! Christ is challenging us to make our lives meaningful. When we live our life tuned into the fine tension of being a witness to Christ, we will fill the society with the music that invites them to “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8). In this alone lies the key to true happiness that the world cannot give or take away.

Fr. Tom Kunnel C.O.