Gospel Reading : Matthew 5:13-19
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
What do the Fathers say?
St CYRIL of Alexandria. The Church’s teaching has been compared with salt because of salt’s good taste and delightfulness. For without salt neither bread nor fish is edible. So too without the apostles’ understanding and instruction, every soul is dull and unwholesome and unpleasant to God.
‘Salt’ is the frame of mind that is filled with the apostolic word, which is full of understanding. When it has been sown in our souls, it allows the word of wisdom to dwell in us.
St JEROME. By the Apostles the whole human race is seasoned.
St REMIGIUS. It should be known, that in the Old Testament no sacrifice was offered to God unless it were first sprinkled with salt, for none can present an acceptable sacrifice to God without the flavour of heavenly wisdom.
St AUGUSTINE. If you by whom the nations are to be salted shall lose the kingdom of heaven through fear of temporal persecution, who are they by whom your error shall be corrected.
Or they are esteemed to have lost their sense, who either by pursuing abundance, or fearing lack of temporal goods, lose that which is eternal, and which men can neither give nor take away.
It is not he that suffers persecution who is trodden under foot of men, but he who through fear of persecution falls away. For we can tread only on what is below us; but he is no way below us, who however much he may suffer in the body, yet has his heart fixed in heaven.
Sources:
Bible readings from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Second Catholic Edition, copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Quotes of the Fathers from Thomas Aquinas’ Catena Aurea Translated by St John Henry Newman
Quotes – St Cyril from Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS), New Testament Volume Ia: Matthew 1–13, edited by Manlio Simonetti (InterVarsity Press).
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