Dear Friends,
Be salty! Stay lit!
For whatever reason, an advertisement for a sweatshirt with that phrase keeps appearing on my Facebook page. I’ve been tempted to buy it because, in these days more than ever, in the midst of so many challenges in the Church and in our country, it is so important for us, the followers of Jesus, to keep our light shining and to keep salting the earth with Christ-Life.
“You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus says in today’s continuation of his Sermon on the Mount. “You are the light of the world.” But just how are we salt and light? When we live the Beatitudes as Jesus taught us (last Sunday’s gospel) we become salt that flavors a dreary earth with a new taste for life. When we take the beatitudes as our own inner attitudes, we light up the world with a new way of living—the very way of God.
That means that in all of our thoughts and actions, we try to be peacemakers. That doesn’t mean we avoid conflict; it means we try to bring about SHALOM—total well being of mind, heart, body and soul—for ourselves, our neighbors, and especially for the weak, the vulnerable, the forgotten, the despised and scapegoated.
To light up the world with God’s love means to be truly meek. That doesn’t mean we are doormats or pushovers; it means that, like a meeked horse, all of our energies are harnessed. They don’t round wild but are singularly focused on what matters: the well-being of all God’s children and all God’s creation.
To be salty means that we have a real, deep-down hunger and thirst for justice, for putting things right, for making sure that every one of our brothers and sisters has all they need to flourish and grow and become everything God made them to be.
Undoubtedly this is a tall order. And it can seem daunting. And in times like these, it can even seem impossible, or, dare we say, hopeless. But of course, it isn’t! Jesus himself has lived the Beatitudes and revealed that they ultimately lead to Resurrection, Life, the Brilliant Life of God.
Cynthia Bourgeault reminds us that as Christians, our hope is not based on a particular outcome or ending—which doesn’t mean we don’t seek and work for a world of justice and peace. Of course we do. Even when we don’t see immediate results and even when it seems we’re losing ground, we still struggle for SHALOM. Yet our hope isn’t based on outcomes which don’t come right away. Our hope is based on origin, on something that has been there since the very beginning: a sustaining, life-giving, loving Presence.
Cynthia remembers the hope-filled words of Habakkuk:
Even though the fig trees have no fruit and no grapes grow on the vines; even though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no corn; even though the sheep all die and the cattle stalls are empty, I will still be joyful and glad because the LORD GOD is my savior. The LORD GOD gives me strength. He makes me sure-footed as a deer and keeps me safe on the mountains.
That, my friends, is real hope—based on the awareness of God’s faithful abiding presence, enabling us to keep doing the good and climbing the mountain of justice and peace.
So, feast on the Eucharist. It is Christ’s sustaining presence given to us as our very food and drinks.
Gift yourself with moments of quiet and stillness, to be “meeked’ in the Love of God.
And then? Be salty! Stay lit!
Peace and every good,
Father Liam