5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 5:13-16

Have you ever imagined having a sumptuous dinner without salt? Salt has become a very important part of human life since time immemorial. In fact, there was a time when salt was almost as precious as gold, and in some communities it is called “white gold”. Salt is important because of two qualities, it provides taste in our food and also, especially before refrigeration was invented, it was used as a preservative for food.

Jesus in the gospel has noticed the importance of salt during his time, so that for him to say that you must be the “salt of the earth” was actually a compliment to his listeners and also a challenge. When we season our food with salt, we only use very little of it, most of the time no more than a pinch. Anything more than that it would ruin our food and cause countless diseases because of it. And yet, with just a few grains it can make all the difference in our food.

When Matthew was writing his gospel, he knew that Christians were just the minority and he knew that if Christians were to make a difference in the world, they should do something that would make Christians stand out. For this is the purpose of our existence.

The challenge for Christians in this world today is, have we been able to achieve and make a difference in this world? Sometimes, we don’t want to take that challenge to be a difference. We don’t want to stand out and we’re just willing to go with the flow. We should not forget that it is through how we do things differently that more people have been attracted to become Christian.

Why is it that in difficult times, people of great faith have managed to have the positive attitude in times of trials? Why do people who are suffering in pain, still manage to find meaning in their suffering and rely on their faith in God to make it through? It is in accepting the challenge to become the salt of the earth, the difference in society that would make us stand out as Christians. It is when we blend too much in the world that the danger becomes very real of losing our own saltiness and become useless and deserved to be trampled underfoot.

During our baptism, either as an adult or an infant, there’s a part of the ceremony when we, through our parents or godparents, receive a lighted candle as the priest or deacon says “receive the light of Christ”. And we believe that as we receive the light of Christ we also become lights of Christ. And this light that burns within us will continue to burn until the day we die. The question is that what do we do when we receive this light.

The second part of the gospel for today like the first is challenging us to become the light of the world. Jesus knew that for a lamp to be hidden or to be put under the bushel basket is absolutely useless. We are again asked by Christ to reflect what God has done for us.

Whenever we do something good, it is just a product of the grace that God has given us. For example, if we forgive somebody who has done us wrong or has cheated us, we forgive because the grace that God has given us gives us the capacity to forgive, and the same is true in every good deed that we do. Every good deed that we do is a glorification of God the Father.

There was a car plate that I saw one day and it said, “If you are arrested for being a Christian, would you have enough evidence to be convicted?”

We live in a world nowadays where to stand out and declare that we’re Christians in the open is something that we’re quite uncomfortable to say. Nowadays, Christianity seems to be confined inside the church but when we go out of the church after the Mass, Christianity is also out of the window. Church nowadays seemed to be an obligation that we attend so that we can feel that we’re Christians than after the Mass so also goes our Christianity.

Jesus is asking us to be Christians not only when we go to church but more importantly outside of it. We are called to become the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world” because of our special mission to be a difference in this world. And by our good works however small it is will identify ourselves as Christians and then we become a difference.