Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 8, 2020

February 8, 20208 min read

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Vigil
February 8, 2020

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:

The following text guided the homily:

This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday.
With unforgettable, down-to-earth images, Jesus will tell us that we have a double mission with respect to everyone else: to be the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World. Notice, first what he doesn’t say: Jesus doesn’t calls us the salt or light of the Church, because our mission is to go out and transform the whole world. Likewise, Jesus doesn’t say, “You mustbecome the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World.” He says, rather, “You are the Salt and Light.” This is very significant because by our baptism, we have already received this identity and vocation.
Let’s look at each of the images.
When Jesus called his followers and us to be the salt of the earth, they would have understood it in three different ways because there were three fundamental uses of salt in the ancient world:
The first was as apreservative. Salt was used to preserve meat or fish from rotting. There was obviously no electricity and therefore refrigeration in the ancient world. If any fish or meat was going to last in the sweltering Middle Eastern climate, it needed to be salted. This points to the fact that Jesus calls us to be his instrument to prevent the earth from going to corruption, from dying. We’re supposed to keep the world and others good. We all know that there are certain people who when they walk into a room keep others on their best behavior, because they lift others to a higher standard by the way they themselves live. That’s what Jesus is calling all of us to do. Are we the types of people who lift others to better behavior?
The second purpose of salt was tostart a fire. At Jesus’ time, people would take animal dung, mix it with a lot of salt and then light it on fire. The dung alone couldn’t be ignited, but when it was mixed with salt, the salt would be able to be lit and then would gradually heat the dung, which kept heat for a really long time. Salt was the ancient equivalent of starter wood or lighter fluid for a barbecue. In calling us to be the Salt of the Earth in this way, Jesus is reminding us of two parts of our mission. First, we see in this use of salt that salt can redeem almost anything, even turning excrement into something good and useful. As Salt of the Earth we’re called to be God’s instrument for bringing good out of the evil we encounter, to help even those who were given over to evil to start producing something good. Secondly, salt is supposed to be a fire-starter. We are supposed to easily lit and capable of heating up others.
The third and final function of salt at Jesus’ time we’ve maintained today, to give flavor to the food we consume.A little bit of salt as we know can influence a whole meal. This points to the fact that we, as salt of the earth, are called to give flavor, to bring joy, to the earth. So many in the world think that to enjoy themselves, there has to be a frat house atmosphere, where there’s plenty of booze, drugs, dim lights, lots of willing members of the opposite sex and other types of behavior that leads people to hangovers, methodone treatments, STDs and other regrettable and preventable consequences. Jesus calls us to show what real joy in life is, to be people who are happy, who are truly blessed by living together with Jesus as the cause of our joy.
Jesus says, however, that for us to fulfill this mission as the Salt of the Earth we need to ensure that our salt doesn’t go flat. How does salt lose its saltiness? The biochemist in me will tell you that it happens when the sodium gets separated from the chloride by other cations and anions. How do we, as human beings, lose oursaltiness? By getting separated from Christ by other persons or things, by the cations of positive things and pleasure or the anions of negative experiences, worries and the like. And when we get separated from Christ then we can begin to lose the three qualities our salt is meant to bring to the earth.
The second attribute Jesus describes today of our mission, of what distinguishes us from others, is that we are called to be the light of the world. At the Presentation, Simeon called Jesus the Light of Revelation to the Gentiles. Jesus later said about himself, “I am the Light of the World.” Jesus, in calling us the light of the world, wants us to reflect his light. He sends us out as the light of the world because the world is living in the midst of so much darkness: the darkness of grief, of physical pain, of broken hearts, of depression, of ignorance and of sin. Jesus sends us out to be light for this world in darkness. In the Psalms we sing, “The just man is a light in the darkness for the upright,” and Jesus calls each of us to be that light. Our presence is to help other people see better, to see things — and the most important things of all — as they really are.

There are two fundamental purposes for light. The first is to help people to see. The second is to warm. Christ has done both for us. He has come and mercifully taught us in such a way that we may walk as children of the light and be true children of the light. So the Christian life is supposed to be luminescent, like the lights on a landing strip at an airport on a foggy night that help planes land. In the midst of many walking in valleys of darkness, Christians are called to burn with the light so that others can follow us in following Jesus the Light of the World. Similarly, light gives off warmth, and Christ has come into the world to warm us by his love, to burn away whatever in us is frigid or tepid, so that we in turn may warm others by the fire of divine love. When we approach Jesus and when others approach us, we and they should feel like someone cold approaching a lit fireplace.

For this to occur, Jesus tells us, we need to ensure that the light of our light doesn’t remain hidden. Our light is supposed to illumine others, not be hidden under a bushel basket or false humility, or peer pressure or shame to live as a Christian. Our faith is meant to be visible. There are some Christians who are afraid to live their faith in a public way, who succumb to secularist intimidation to keep their faith private and hidden in a closet. Their acquaintances know far more about what they think of sports or the weather or politics than what they believe about Christ. Our faith, however, those intensely personal, is not supposed to be private. It’s supposed to be a light for others. In fact, it’s supposed to be the most noticeable thing about us, the first thing our family members or friends or fellow students or workers will say about us, that we remind them a little or a lot of Jesus, the way the world says this about Pope Francis.
Jesus, who today calls us anew to be the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World in order to save the world and lead it on the path to light and life everlasting, wants to give us in the Mass all the graces he knows we need truly to live up to this vocation. He wants to give us his help to prevent our salt from losing its saltiness and our light from going out or being hidden. Let us receive that help and respond with courage — and go out to live as who we are by baptism and who he, with great love and confidence, constantly calls us to be.