I remember as a kid, my dad telling stories about working in the salt mines under Lake Erie when he was a younger man. Morton Salt has about 3 miles of salt mines 2000 feet underneath our great lake. This salt is an important source of revenue for the State of Ohio, and the salt is utilized in a number of ways: particularly as a seasoning for our food and on our roads during the winter.
Immediately following the Lord’s teaching on the beatitudes, which we heard last Sunday. The Lord says that his disciples must be salt. Talk about bringing us down to earth. In order to attain heaven, you must become salt.
Salt was used in a number of ways in Jesus’ time, just as it does for us.
First salt is used as a seasoning. So, too, Christians are to be a sort of seasoning to an otherwise bland world. There is nothing more interesting—no one more full of life than a true Christian saint filled with the life of Christ.
This week we celebrated Catholic Schools week, and daily over in the school, the students learned about some of the patron saints of Christian Education, saints like Thomas Aquinas, John Neuman, Angela Merici, Elizabeth Ann Seton, holy men and women who bristled with energy and joy and charity. The saltiness of the saints has changed human history. So become salty—using your unique gifts and talents to serve the Lord.
How else is salt used? Salt is necessary for life. Even the most stringent nutritionists have to admit that salt is a necessary component of the human diet. The ancients, too, understood, salt was necessary for good health. Similarly, Christians need to be salt in this way. The health, the survival of a society depends on Christians—doing what Christians do, infusing societal life with the life and goodness and truth and beauty of God. Our mission isn’t just to come to Church, our mission is to infuse this neighborhood with the saltiness of Christ for its own survival. Salt helps regulate a body’s heart rate, digestion, respiration, brain activity, and blood pressure—and without Christians living out the mission in a particular area, the society’s ability to pump blood, think, breath, digest will soon fail.
Salt is also a Preservative: In the days before refrigeration, salt made preserving food possible for times of famine. Christians will have the job of preserving what is good and holy in creation, opposing spiritual decay. Seeing many of the strong Christian values in our country begin to fade, Christians need to take up again this call to preserve. Christians must preserve the nation, marriage, family, the young from spiritual rot.
Salt is also a Purifier: The salt in the oceans of the world act as a natural cleaning agent, and most water purification systems use salt as a "purifier." Christians are to be the world’s purifiers: opposing the corrupting powers of malice and perversion and greed. Each of us too need to seek the constant purifying of our minds from the world’s corrupting influence. We purify our minds through study of God’s word, interiorizing the doctrines of our faith, the example of the saints.
Salt also has a destructive power. As a kid, I’d run to the kitchen to get a salt shaker when I found a slug in the garden…a little morbid, yes…you surprised? In the ancient world, when an army would conquer their enemy, they’d knock down the walls, raise the city to the ground, then really to rub it in sometimes they would cast salt upon the earth so that nothing would ever grow there again. Are Christians to be a destructive power in society? In a sense we are! We are to be a force against the powers of evil, the manifestations of the Antichrist.
You see, the antichrist is like that slug, and he is powerless when Christians really get salty. So all the ways in which human life is violated and discounted, all forms of hatred and violence, we are meant to interrupt them and get in their way.
Another use for salt: as we know all too well, living here in Cleveland, Salt is used for the melting of ice. Salt makes things flow that are frozen. The Church’s task is to loosen up a world frozen in its own self-regard, frozen in violent and perverted ways. When we are faithful to Christ, we have a melting influence. Think of the power of one saint, how he can melt hearts that have been frozen against Christ. Many souls have been converted to Christ because they saw Christians selflessly engaged in acts of charity. When the Church is faithful, we can have that melting influence in a neighborhood or state or country to get things flowing in the right direction again.
Finally, just like it’s used on our roads, in ancient times salt was also used to prevent people from slipping on slippery paths. Christians are called to help souls from slipping into damnation—promoting the teachings of Christ on a societal level which give stability to civilization, pointing out when fellow Christians begin down slippery paths away from God. We call them fallen Catholics because they have slipped.
You and I are called to be salt. But the Lord warns that salt can lose its flavor. Perhaps maybe you have lost a bit of enthusiasm for the Christian life. Perhaps Christ is not the vital force in your marriage, that he should be, or the reason you get up in the morning. Maybe you don’t feel like you are having a positive influence on your neighbors, or the fallen away members of your family.
The solution: Pray, pray, pray. You cannot be salt without constant prayer. A priest who does not pray is worthless, husbands and wives who do not pray will not have the strength and power to faithfully live out the Christian responsibilities of the marriage sacrament. Young people who do not pray will not have the strength to withstand the nearly unending torrent of evil from our culture.
Salt: an ordinary substance with tremendous potential, many uses, vital to life and civilization. We must become salt by bringing Christ into our workplaces, into our conversations, into our civic life, in our family life. Be salt, my friends, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
