Tuesday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 13, 2023

Matthew 5, 13-16

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 lamp stand, 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.”

The Lord Jesus tells his disciples that they are “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world”: he does not say that they will be these things in the future but that they are so now.  At this stage of his training and forming they are still far from the readiness for missionary work they will possess after receiving the Holy Spirit, but even as he spoke to them they were already salt and light for a fallen world that could not help itself.  

Though the world seems awash in darkness now with forms of behavior deemed immoral, vile, and even worthy of death in times past now raised to legality and acceptance by large swaths of the population, and with genocide on scales hardly imagined in the days of the ancient conquerors, the Church and her saints stand as beams of light that still guide those who yearn for truth leading to her holy Source.  In contrast, before the age of grace and the coming of the Lord Jesus, the world lay in even more severe shadows, without hope of any kind for the great majority of earth’s peoples.  We get glimpses of this in verses in the Scriptures: “(D-R): The fool said in his heart: ‘There is no God.’  They are corrupted, and become abominable in iniquities: there is none that does good. God looked down from heaven on the children of men: to see if there were any that did understand, or did seek God. All have gone aside, they are become unprofitable together, there is none that does good, no not one (Psalm 53, 1-4).  And, “How long shall sinners, O Lord: how long shall sinners glory? Shall they utter, and speak iniquity: shall all speak who work injustice? Your people, O Lord, they have brought low: and they have afflicted your inheritance. They have slain the widow and the stranger: and they have murdered the fatherless” (Psalm 93, 3-6).  The Christian hopes in God and rejoices even in bad times, but for the one who does not know God and believes that this life is all there is, the loss of youth, health, and wealth is utterly catastrophic.

Though we be not perfect yet, we believe in God and hope for heaven.  We are called by Jesus now, just as we are, to be salt and light to those who are in danger of the rot of sin and hopelessness and the darkness of ignorance and superstition.