Light of the World and Salt to the Earth

Fr Antonio Pineda
Assistant Parish Priest

Jesus calls us two things in this Sunday’s Gospel: the light of the world and salt to the earth. What does this mean? Think of the people who have affected your life and helped you to believe in God. They are the people who have lit up your life with meaning. They are people who changed your life for the better because they cared for you. It is these people that Christ wants us to be.

Christ, through his incarnation and resurrection, gave light to the world. The only question now is, what are we going to do with that light? Our Lord wants to become the people he has made us to be. He wants us to become the light for other people, and salt to inspire others. Christ wants us to follow him and witness to what we believe.

God makes us the salt of the earth. Salt, however, does not exist for its own sake. You wouldn’t sit down to eat salt by itself. Salt is a seasoning. It preserves and gives flavour to our food. Similarly, light is not meant to be looked at or covered and selfishly guarded like some rare object; it is freely given so that people might see what is around them and walk in safety. Put another way, light is meant to penetrate and overcome darkness.

In other words, Christ saved us not just for ourselves, but to be tools and assistance for others. God gave us talents and skills not for our own benefit, but for others’. This is doing the work of God and when we do so, we stand proudly for our faith. Then we can say we are living our lives as God intended. Full of light, we become beacons in a dark place.