A season of leaven and salt

For every one will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its saltness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” (Mark 9:49-50)

The time is getting nearer for the Christ child to be born. Jesus is the new Covenant with all of God’s people, and the quinta essentia of this covenant is the Eucharist. Jesus is the high priest who brings us back into relationship with God; His crucifixion the perfect sacrifice; His Eucharist, the perfection of sacrifice for us to partake in. 

And there is more. Looking to Leviticus 2:13 “Regarding the offering of cereal for sacrifice on the altar: “You shall season all your cereal offerings with salt; you shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be lacking.” Salt symbolized bonding between nomadic people who shared a meal together. It also symbolized the nature of God’s covenant with his people as unbreakable, unquestionable. Thus, as clarified in 2 Chronicles 13:5 “Ought you not to know that the LORD God of Israel gave the kingship over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt?” 

So what is the purpose to all of this? This is the season of meals, of gatherings with family and friends. As we await the birth of the Christ who gives us the perfect food, as we partake every Sunday (and for some, daily) of this Eucharist, we are called to be the salt in all of our relationships. We are to be the leaven that enriches the dough just like the woman with 3 measures of flour (Matthew 13:33). But not just any kind of leaven.  Jesus was speaking of how the smallest of pure faith can spread to permeate broad and deep. Our purity of heart spreads to those around us as the Holy Spirit acts through us to them. 

Certainly, spending so much time with people of a different faith (or none at all) can tease out the pharisee in anyone! Jesus, knowing this, warns us of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and corruption, worldliness, pleasure and political ambition of Herod (Matthew 16:6; Mark 8:15; Luke 12:1). All of this brings to mind that we are to remove the plank from our own eye before attempting to remove the twig from theirs (Matthew 7:3). As St. Paul tells us, we must clean out the old leaven so that we may be ‘a new lump’ (1 Corinthians 5:6-8). 😊 

“Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill; men throw it away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Luke 14:33-35)

We are to be the leaven of our families and homes, the salt of the relationship. Permitting His healing sanctification, we are God’s living covenant to every soul we meet; after all, the covenant is intended for them too.  We must not be salt that has lost its taste (Luke 14:34). That is, to have let seep away the true faith He has given while letting other ideas seep in. Think about how a football player runs with the ball, tucked tightly under his arm against his side to prevent (a) it from coming loose and being dropped and/or (B) someone knocking it away by having access to it. This is what happens to our faith. We may begin with a tight hold on it but eventually cease keeping it so close to our body. The slightest gap gives room for error and fuzziness to seep in, and we risk losing a grip on it altogether. Jesus told Bartimaeus it was his faith that healed him (Mark 10:52) and it is for us too. 

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one.  (Colossians 4:6)

It is our faith that will heal us, our families, our church. A lived faith is the relationship with the Trinity; salt that is pure and untainted. 

“Mary loves all the faithful with an incomparable love. But she loves priests with an altogether unique love because she sees in the priest a greater resemblance to the image of her Son than in any other Christian of equal holiness.”

We continue to pray for Pope Francis, our clergy and religious who bring God to us in the sacraments and bring us to God in their prayer: 

O Loving Mother Mary, Mother of Priests, take to your heart your sons who are close to you because of their priestly ordination and because of the power which they have received to carry on the work of Christ in a world which needs them so much. Be their comfort, be their joy, be their strength, and especially help them to live and to defend the ideals of consecrated celibacy. Amen. (John J. Cardinal Carberry)

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam 😊

(Image: the Lord God appearing to King David by Michael Ostendorfer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)