Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL BOAKYE YEBOAH

CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF KUMASI, GHANA

SALT

Institutions whether civil or religious strive to achieve their set goals. At times the set goals form key part of the ethos of the institution and to lose it or deviate from it may destroy the institution. It is the loss of such ethos that Jesus likened it to a salt that if it loses its taste must be thrown down for men to walk on it.

Almost all the great nations we admire and wish to visit were built with clear and precise set goals. United States is what it is because of the dreams and set goals of its Founding Fathers. In recent times Singapore has shown that with a visionary set goal, a people can transform their land from one state of being to another. Successful businesses or financial institutions are what they are because of living out and the operationalization of their set goals.        

There is one condition that may help operationalized set goals. The condition is that those who are employed to work for an institution should be ready to work with those set goals else the set goals may remain a draft on paper. When you are building an institution or setting up a business empire as much as it is good for the Founding Fathers to have clear policies and set goals, they should employ people who will be ready to dedicate their lives for such policies and set goals. I would like to think that such was the intention of Jesus when he addressed the crowd and his disciples with the words we find in today’s gospel passage. Building his heavenly kingdom on earth was among his clear set goals but he needed disciples who shared in those objectives. Many were called to be his disciples but few were chosen because to become his disciple came with certain qualifications and two of them he highlights in today’s gospel passage. The inspired writer stated clearly that Jesus wanted his disciples to be salt of the earth and light of the world. But for our reflection today, we will focus on being salt of the earth.                                                         

Salt is among the cheapest commodities in the market and yet possesses one of the highest preservative values. There are varied schools of thought on the invention of salt and one that I came across is that salt was invented by Native Americans. Some historians believe that Native Americans produced salt from salt springs more than 500 years before the arrival of Europeans. Apart from possessing preservative properties, salt’s medicinal value is also of great importance. Hippocrates encouraged his fellow healers to use salt water to heal various ailments by immersing their patients in sea water.                                                                                                                  

In today’s reflection I will dwell more on the preservative value of salt of which Jesus employed in his public teachings as narrated to us by St. Matthew in these words: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men.”                                        

When Jesus said this, he provided us with an expression which has become the greatest compliment that can be paid to anyone. When we wish to stress someone’s solid worth and usefulness, we say: ‘People like that are the salt of the earth.’                                                        

In the ancient world, salt was highly valued. The Greeks called salt divine (theion). In a phrase, which in Latin is a kind of jingle, the Roman said: Nil utilius sole et sale, meaning - ‘There is nothing more useful than sun and salt.’ In the time of Jesus, salt was connected in people’s minds with three special qualities.

            (1) Salt was connected with purity. No doubt its glistening whiteness made the connection easy. The Romans said that salt was the purest of all things, because it came from the purest of all things, the sun and the sea. Salt was indeed the most primitive of all offerings to the gods, and even the Jewish sacrifices were offered with salt. So, if the Christians are to be the salt of the earth, they must be examples of purity. One of the characteristics of the world in which we live is the lowering of standards. Standards of honesty, standards of diligence in work, standards of conscientiousness, moral standards, all tend to be lowered. The Christian must be the person who holds aloft the standard of absolute purity in speech, in conduct and even in thought. Christians can never depart from the standards of strict honesty. Christians can never think lightly of the lowering of moral standards in a world where the streets of every great city provide their deliberate enticements to sin. Christians cannot withdraw from the world, but they must, as James said, keep themselves “unstained by the world’ (James 1:27).                                                                                

(2) In the ancient world, salt was the commonest of all preservatives. It was used to keep things from going bad, and to hold putrefaction at bay. Plutarch, the Roman historian and philosopher, has a strange way of putting that. He says that meat is a dead body and part of a dead body, and will, if left to itself, go bad; but salt preserves it and keeps it fresh, and is therefore like a new soul inserted into a dead body. So, salt preserves from corruption. If Christians are to be the salt of the earth, they must have a certain antiseptic influence on life.                                       

We all know that there are certain people in whose company it is easy to be good; and that also there are certain people in whose company it is easy for standards to be relaxed. There are certain people in whose presence a risqué story would be readily told, and there are other people to whom no one would dream of telling such a tale. Christians must be the cleansing antiseptic in any society in which they happen to be; they must be the ones who by their presence defeat corruption and make it easier for others to be good.                                                                              

(3) But the greatest and the most obvious quality of salt is that salt lends flavor to things. Food without salt is a sadly insipid and even a sickening thing. Christianity is to life what salt is to food. Christianity lends flavor to life.                                                                                         

I strongly believe that the flavor Christianity gives to our world is very low. Christians are estimated to be over a billion and yet we cannot flavor the world as the early Christians did. There are many things that Christians can flavor the world with and the author to the first reading makes one humanitarian suggestion. The inspired writer graphically recommended: “Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless; clothe the naked when you see them, and do not turn your back on your own.” These are humanitarian acts we need to do to improve our world.                                                                                                                                                      

Let us all help to season our world with salt to make it a better place to live. If you wish to help, do not look first at the bigger picture of how to change the world but rather the little things. Bring the best in the life to a friend, a brother/sister, etc. Allow God to use you to season people and things around you. OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP PRAY FOR US.