Book of Isaiah 58,7-10. Thus says the LORD: 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. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am! If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.
Psalms 112(111) Light shines through the darkness for the upright; he is gracious and merciful and just. Well for the man who is gracious and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice;
He shall never be moved; the just one shall be in everlasting remembrance. An evil report he shall not fear; His heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.
His heart is steadfast; he shall not fear till he looks down upon his foes Lavishly he gives to the poor, his justice shall endure forever;
his horn shall be exalted in glory.
First Letter to the Corinthians 2,1-5.
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, proclaiming the mystery of God, I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling, and my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive (words of) wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 5,13-16. Jesus said to his disciples: "You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."
MEETING OF S. JOHN PAUL II WITH YOUTH Sunday, 5 May 2002 Dear Young People,
1. You are the salt of the earth.... You are the light of the world! (Mt 5,13-14). These words of Jesus, as you know, constitute the theme of the next World Youth Day. This is how the divine Teacher addressed his disciples on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, 2,000 years ago. This is how once again he will address thousands of young Christians from every part of the world next summer, in Toronto. These same words re-echo today, on the shores of the Mediterranean, as my brief but full visit to your beautiful island draws to its close. They re-echo for you, dear young people of Ischia. And it is a great joy to me to be an echo of the voice of Christ, who invites you to listen, think, and act. The words of Christ alone can truly be a light for your steps.
I greet you warmly, dear young friends, each of you. I thank your bishops who presented you as "sentinels of the dawn". I thank your representatives who have spoken in the name of all the young people of Ischia. Thank you for your warm welcome, in which I found the enthusiasm of youth and the "genius" of your island.
2. "You are the salt of the earth" (Mt 5,13). Dear young men and women, it is not hard to understand this first image that Jesus used. Salt: a very important image. When there was no other way of preserving food, salt did not only serve to give food savour, but was often indispensable to guarantee the possibility of access to it. In saying: "you are the salt of the earth", the Redeemer entrusted a twofold mission to his disciples: to give life a savour by showing its meaning as revealed through him and to make accessible to all the food that comes from on high. Today it is in this twofold sense that I want to speak of it to you.
Young people of Ischia, be the salt of the earth that gives beauty and savour.
Show with concrete gestures and convincing words that life and living together the love that Jesus came to reveal and give us is worthwhile. Is it not the love of Christ, the Victor over evil and death, who transformed us? Do all you can so that this experience can reach the greatest number of young people.
Be the salt that enables the food of Heaven to be distributed to all, so that even the least reflective and those who have wandered far off, through your enthusiasm, passion, humble and persevering dedication, may feel called to believe in God and to love him in their neighbour.
3. "You are the light of the world" (Mt 5,14). This is Jesus' other message to his disciples. The characteristic of light is to dispel darkness, warm what it touches, and enhance its contours. It does this at high speed. Therefore, for Christians and especially for young Christians, being the light of the world means spreading everywhere the light that comes from on high. It means fighting the darkness that is due to the resistance of evil and sin, and that caused by ignorance and prejudice.
Young people of Ischia, be rays of Christ's light. He is the "light of the world" (Jn 8,12). Radiate this light everywhere, especially where Jesus is not known and loved, or even where he is rejected. With your lives, make people understand that the light which comes from on high does not destroy the human being: on the contrary, it exalts him, just like the sun, whose brilliance throws into bold relief shapes and colours. God is not man's rival but his true friend, his most faithful ally.
You must promote this message with the speed of light! Do not waste time: your youth is too precious to waste even the smallest part. God needs you and calls each one of you by name.
4. From this island full of sunshine and natural beauty, clad in green and immersed in the marvellous waters of the "mare nostrum" (our sea), may a message of light and hope reach all young people, starting with those who come to visit here. Dear young people, together with your parents, pastors, teachers, catechists and friends, be "salt and light" for all those whom the Lord sets on your path.
--->May the Blessed Virgin Mary, "Star of the Sea" guide you; she directs towards the safe haven those who sail on the great ocean of life, by shining like a bright star even in the darkest hours. May your Patron Saints be an example to you, especially St Restituta and St John Joseph of the Cross. May no disturbance, no fear, no sin, separate you from God's love. Jesus is the light that triumphs over the darkness; the salt that gives flavour to your years of youth and to your entire life. It is he who keeps you in beauty and faithfulness to God, his Father and ours.
Goodbye until Toronto, where I hope there will be some of you: together with your peers from every continent, we will offer the world a message of hope. Your bishop introduced you as "sentinels of the dawn". Yes, dear young friends, be faithful sentinels of the Gospel, who await and prepare for the coming of the new Day that is Christ the Lord.
The Holy Father then added extemporaneously when the young people presented a check to help the people of Bethlehem and a large cake for his birthday on 18 May:
Some might think that the young people of Ischia and the young people of Italy are very rich. But I know that here it is a question of a different economy. It is the Gospel economy of the poor in spirit. I hope that the forthcoming World Youth Day may be the expression of the Gospel maturity of all the young people of the world, and especially, of the young people of Italy and the young people of your wonderful island.
So courage. Courage and hope. Praised be Jesus Christ.
ANGELUS 6 February 2011 In this Sunday’s Gospel the Lord Jesus tells his disciples: “You are the salt of the earth.... You are the light of the world” (Mt 5:13,14). With these richly evocative images he wishes to pass on to them the meaning of their mission and their witness.
Salt, in the cultures of the Middle East, calls to mind several values such as the Covenant, solidarity, life and wisdom. Light is the first work of God the Creator and is a source of life; the word of God is compared to light, as the Psalmist proclaims: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps 119[118]:105).
And, again in today’s Liturgy, the Prophet Isaiah says: “If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday” (58:10).
Wisdom sums up in itself the beneficial effects of salt and light: in fact, disciples of the Lord are called to give a new “taste” to the world and to keep it from corruption with the wisdom of God, which shines out in its full splendour on the Face of the Son because he is “the true light that enlightens every man” (Jn 1:9).
United to him, in the darkness of indifference and selfishness, Christians can diffuse the light of God’s love, true wisdom that gives meaning to human life and action.
Next 11 February, the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, we shall celebrate the World Day of the Sick. It is a favourable opportunity on which to reflect, to pray and to increase the sensitivity that the ecclesial communities and civil society show to our sick brothers and sisters.
In the Message for this Day, inspired by a sentence from the First Letter of Peter, “By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pt 2:24), I invite everyone to contemplate Jesus, the Son of God, who suffered and died but is Risen.
God radically opposes the overbearingness of evil. The Lord takes care of human beings in every situation, he shares in their suffering and opens their hearts to hope. I therefore urge all health-care workers to recognize in the sick person not only a body marked by frailty but first and foremost a person, to whom they should give full solidarity and offer appropriated and qualified help.
In this context I also recall that today in Italy is the “Day for Life”. I hope that everyone will make an effort to increase the culture of life and to make the human being the centre in all circumstances. According to both faith and reason, the dignity of the person cannot be reduced to his or her faculties or visible capacity; thus human dignity is never lacking even when the person is weak, sick or in need of help.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us invoke the motherly intercession of the Virgin Mary so that parents, grandparents, teachers, priests and all who are involved in education may inculcate in the young generations wisdom of heart, to enable them to attain fullness of life.
ANGELUS 9 February 2020 Dear Brothers and Sisters, Good Morning!
In today’s Gospel Reading (cf. Mt 5:13-16), Jesus says to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth. … You are the light of the world” (vv. 13-14). He uses a symbolic language to indicate to those who intend to follow him some criteria for living presence and witnessing in the world.
First image: salt. Salt is the element that gives flavour and which conserves and preserves food from corruption. The disciple is therefore called to keep society far from the dangers, the corrosive germs which pollute the life of people. It is a question of resisting moral degradation, sin, bearing witness to the values of honesty and fraternity, not giving in to worldly flattery of careerism, of power, of wealth. “Salt” is the disciple who, despite daily failures — because we all have them — gets up again from the dust of his errors, and begins again with courage and patience, every day, to seek dialogue and encounter with others. “Salt” is the disciple who does not look for consensus and praise, but strives to be a humble, constructive presence, faithful to the teachings of Jesus who came into the world not to be served, but to serve. And there is a great need for this attitude!
The second image that Jesus proposes to his disciples is that of light: “You are the light of the world”. Light disperses darkness and enables us to see. Jesus is the light that has dispelled the darkness, but it [darkness] still remains in the world and in individuals. It is the task of Christians to disperse it by radiating the light of Christ and proclaiming his Gospel. It is a radiance that can also come from our words, but it must flow above all from our “good works” (v. 16). A disciple and a Christian community are light in the world when they direct others to God, helping each one to experience his goodness and his mercy. The disciple of Jesus is light when he knows how to live his faith outside narrow spaces, when he helps to eliminate prejudice, to eliminate slander, and to bring the light of truth into situations vitiated by hypocrisy and lies. To shed light. But it is not my light, it is the light of Jesus: we are instruments to enable Jesus’ light to reach everyone.
Jesus invites us not to be afraid to live in the world, even if sometimes there are conditions of conflict and sin there. In the face of violence, injustice, oppression, the Christian cannot withdraw into self or hide in the security of his own enclosure; the Church also cannot withdraw into herself, she cannot abandon her mission of evangelization and service. Jesus, at the Last Supper, asked the Father not to take the disciples out of the world, to leave them, there, in the world, but to guard them from the spirit of the world. The Church expends herself with generosity and tenderness towards the little ones and the poor: this is not the spirit of the world, this spreads light, it is salt. The Church listens to the cry of the least and the excluded, because she is aware that she is a pilgrim community called to prolong Jesus Christ’s saving presence in history.
May the Blessed Virgin help us to be salt and light in the midst of the people, bringing to everyone, by example and word, the Good News of God’s love.
FAUSTI – The salt gives flavor and preserves from corruption,it is also a symbol of wisdom, friendship and disposability to sacrifice. The community is salt when it has the flavor of the beatitudes. They give us our knowledge and taste, (know = having the flavor), they preserve us from corruption, they give us wisdom, skills of friendship, willingness to pay its costs. They are our identity as children of the Father. Our identity is "salt of the earth". Not only it gives meaning to our personal life, but to that of every man. The filial and fraternal life is for everybody very flavor of life. If one is not son, and is not brother to anyone, it simply is not. It is easy to lose the flavor of Christ, that means to give own lif e in love and humility, "Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many will cool off ”. The seed of the Word that makes us children, it may not take root, it may dry up just when it has taked roots, it may be suffocated after growing. The worldly wisdom is not that of the cross. In each of u sit is great the struggle between the wisdom of love and that of selfishness. The disciple who does not have the flavor of Christ doen't worth anything anymore and does not help anyone. Those who "smells " of Christ is light, identity is important. Light is the beginning of creation. Jesus is seen by Matthew as the rising of a great light on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadows of death (4.12 to 17). In Him we are enlightened, we come to the light of our reality: we are born as children. Then who is enlightened , in turn, gives light to the others. What gives flavor to the earth, enlightens the world, showing them its beauty. The word "world" means order, structure, beauty. In the New. Testament. has a negative connotation. Indeed, "this" world is structured on the greed of having possessions,, power, look (1 Jn 2:16), with its deceptive charm that makes it looking good, beautiful, desirable. The filial life unveils the deception, and restores the truth of its splendor. The community is a city, the holy city, the place where we live the relations in divine and heavenly way not in devilish and hellish way . The holy city is on top of the mountains, as the temple of the Lord (IS 2.2). Everyone sees it and says"Let's come , let us climb the mountain of the Lord, because He will teach us His ways and we may walk in His paths." The identity can not remain hidden, even if it doesn't make anything to be seen. Salt can do anything but to salt , and light but to enlighten. The question is not to salt or to enlighten, but to be salt and light. No one can give what he does not have : what you are speaks louder than what you say.
Book of Isaiah 58,7-10.
RispondiEliminaThus says the LORD: 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.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!
If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.
Psalms 112(111)
Light shines through the darkness for the upright;
he is gracious and merciful and just.
Well for the man who is gracious and lends,
who conducts his affairs with justice;
He shall never be moved;
the just one shall be in everlasting remembrance.
An evil report he shall not fear;
His heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.
His heart is steadfast; he shall not fear
till he looks down upon his foes
Lavishly he gives to the poor,
his justice shall endure forever;
his horn shall be exalted in glory.
First Letter to the Corinthians 2,1-5.
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, proclaiming the mystery of God,
I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom.
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling,
and my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive (words of) wisdom,
but with a demonstration of spirit and power,
so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ
according to Saint Matthew 5,13-16.
Jesus said to his disciples: "You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.
Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house.
Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."
THE WORDS OF THE POPES
EliminaMEETING OF S. JOHN PAUL II WITH YOUTH
Sunday, 5 May 2002
Dear Young People,
1. You are the salt of the earth.... You are the light of the world! (Mt 5,13-14). These words of Jesus, as you know, constitute the theme of the next World Youth Day. This is how the divine Teacher addressed his disciples on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, 2,000 years ago. This is how once again he will address thousands of young Christians from every part of the world next summer, in Toronto. These same words re-echo today, on the shores of the Mediterranean, as my brief but full visit to your beautiful island draws to its close. They re-echo for you, dear young people of Ischia. And it is a great joy to me to be an echo of the voice of Christ, who invites you to listen, think, and act. The words of Christ alone can truly be a light for your steps.
I greet you warmly, dear young friends, each of you. I thank your bishops who presented you as "sentinels of the dawn". I thank your representatives who have spoken in the name of all the young people of Ischia. Thank you for your warm welcome, in which I found the enthusiasm of youth and the "genius" of your island.
2. "You are the salt of the earth" (Mt 5,13). Dear young men and women, it is not hard to understand this first image that Jesus used. Salt: a very important image. When there was no other way of preserving food, salt did not only serve to give food savour, but was often indispensable to guarantee the possibility of access to it. In saying: "you are the salt of the earth", the Redeemer entrusted a twofold mission to his disciples: to give life a savour by showing its meaning as revealed through him and to make accessible to all the food that comes from on high. Today it is in this twofold sense that I want to speak of it to you.
Young people of Ischia, be the salt of the earth that gives beauty and savour.
Show with concrete gestures and convincing words that life and living together the love that Jesus came to reveal and give us is worthwhile. Is it not the love of Christ, the Victor over evil and death, who transformed us? Do all you can so that this experience can reach the greatest number of young people.
Be the salt that enables the food of Heaven to be distributed to all, so that even the least reflective and those who have wandered far off, through your enthusiasm, passion, humble and persevering dedication, may feel called to believe in God and to love him in their neighbour.
3. "You are the light of the world" (Mt 5,14). This is Jesus' other message to his disciples. The characteristic of light is to dispel darkness, warm what it touches, and enhance its contours. It does this at high speed. Therefore, for Christians and especially for young Christians, being the light of the world means spreading everywhere the light that comes from on high. It means fighting the darkness that is due to the resistance of evil and sin, and that caused by ignorance and prejudice.
Young people of Ischia, be rays of Christ's light. He is the "light of the world" (Jn 8,12). Radiate this light everywhere, especially where Jesus is not known and loved, or even where he is rejected. With your lives, make people understand that the light which comes from on high does not destroy the human being: on the contrary, it exalts him, just like the sun, whose brilliance throws into bold relief shapes and colours. God is not man's rival but his true friend, his most faithful ally.
You must promote this message with the speed of light! Do not waste time: your youth is too precious to waste even the smallest part. God needs you and calls each one of you by name.
4. From this island full of sunshine and natural beauty, clad in green and immersed in the marvellous waters of the "mare nostrum" (our sea), may a message of light and hope reach all young people, starting with those who come to visit here. Dear young people, together with your parents, pastors, teachers, catechists and friends, be "salt and light" for all those whom the Lord sets on your path.
--->May the Blessed Virgin Mary, "Star of the Sea" guide you; she directs towards the safe haven those who sail on the great ocean of life, by shining like a bright star even in the darkest hours.
EliminaMay your Patron Saints be an example to you, especially St Restituta and St John Joseph of the Cross. May no disturbance, no fear, no sin, separate you from God's love. Jesus is the light that triumphs over the darkness; the salt that gives flavour to your years of youth and to your entire life. It is he who keeps you in beauty and faithfulness to God, his Father and ours.
Goodbye until Toronto, where I hope there will be some of you: together with your peers from every continent, we will offer the world a message of hope. Your bishop introduced you as "sentinels of the dawn". Yes, dear young friends, be faithful sentinels of the Gospel, who await and prepare for the coming of the new Day that is Christ the Lord.
The Holy Father then added extemporaneously when the young people presented a check to help the people of Bethlehem and a large cake for his birthday on 18 May:
Some might think that the young people of Ischia and the young people of Italy are very rich. But I know that here it is a question of a different economy. It is the Gospel economy of the poor in spirit. I hope that the forthcoming World Youth Day may be the expression of the Gospel maturity of all the young people of the world, and especially, of the young people of Italy and the young people of your wonderful island.
So courage. Courage and hope. Praised be Jesus Christ.
BENEDICT XVI
RispondiEliminaANGELUS 6 February 2011
In this Sunday’s Gospel the Lord Jesus tells his disciples: “You are the salt of the earth.... You are the light of the world” (Mt 5:13,14). With these richly evocative images he wishes to pass on to them the meaning of their mission and their witness.
Salt, in the cultures of the Middle East, calls to mind several values such as the Covenant, solidarity, life and wisdom. Light is the first work of God the Creator and is a source of life; the word of God is compared to light, as the Psalmist proclaims: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps 119[118]:105).
And, again in today’s Liturgy, the Prophet Isaiah says: “If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday” (58:10).
Wisdom sums up in itself the beneficial effects of salt and light: in fact, disciples of the Lord are called to give a new “taste” to the world and to keep it from corruption with the wisdom of God, which shines out in its full splendour on the Face of the Son because he is “the true light that enlightens every man” (Jn 1:9).
United to him, in the darkness of indifference and selfishness, Christians can diffuse the light of God’s love, true wisdom that gives meaning to human life and action.
Next 11 February, the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, we shall celebrate the World Day of the Sick. It is a favourable opportunity on which to reflect, to pray and to increase the sensitivity that the ecclesial communities and civil society show to our sick brothers and sisters.
In the Message for this Day, inspired by a sentence from the First Letter of Peter, “By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pt 2:24), I invite everyone to contemplate Jesus, the Son of God, who suffered and died but is Risen.
God radically opposes the overbearingness of evil. The Lord takes care of human beings in every situation, he shares in their suffering and opens their hearts to hope. I therefore urge all health-care workers to recognize in the sick person not only a body marked by frailty but first and foremost a person, to whom they should give full solidarity and offer appropriated and qualified help.
In this context I also recall that today in Italy is the “Day for Life”. I hope that everyone will make an effort to increase the culture of life and to make the human being the centre in all circumstances. According to both faith and reason, the dignity of the person cannot be reduced to his or her faculties or visible capacity; thus human dignity is never lacking even when the person is weak, sick or in need of help.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us invoke the motherly intercession of the Virgin Mary so that parents, grandparents, teachers, priests and all who are involved in education may inculcate in the young generations wisdom of heart, to enable them to attain fullness of life.
POPE FRANCIS
RispondiEliminaANGELUS 9 February 2020
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Good Morning!
In today’s Gospel Reading (cf. Mt 5:13-16), Jesus says to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth. … You are the light of the world” (vv. 13-14). He uses a symbolic language to indicate to those who intend to follow him some criteria for living presence and witnessing in the world.
First image: salt. Salt is the element that gives flavour and which conserves and preserves food from corruption. The disciple is therefore called to keep society far from the dangers, the corrosive germs which pollute the life of people. It is a question of resisting moral degradation, sin, bearing witness to the values of honesty and fraternity, not giving in to worldly flattery of careerism, of power, of wealth. “Salt” is the disciple who, despite daily failures — because we all have them — gets up again from the dust of his errors, and begins again with courage and patience, every day, to seek dialogue and encounter with others. “Salt” is the disciple who does not look for consensus and praise, but strives to be a humble, constructive presence, faithful to the teachings of Jesus who came into the world not to be served, but to serve. And there is a great need for this attitude!
The second image that Jesus proposes to his disciples is that of light: “You are the light of the world”. Light disperses darkness and enables us to see. Jesus is the light that has dispelled the darkness, but it [darkness] still remains in the world and in individuals. It is the task of Christians to disperse it by radiating the light of Christ and proclaiming his Gospel. It is a radiance that can also come from our words, but it must flow above all from our “good works” (v. 16). A disciple and a Christian community are light in the world when they direct others to God, helping each one to experience his goodness and his mercy. The disciple of Jesus is light when he knows how to live his faith outside narrow spaces, when he helps to eliminate prejudice, to eliminate slander, and to bring the light of truth into situations vitiated by hypocrisy and lies. To shed light. But it is not my light, it is the light of Jesus: we are instruments to enable Jesus’ light to reach everyone.
Jesus invites us not to be afraid to live in the world, even if sometimes there are conditions of conflict and sin there. In the face of violence, injustice, oppression, the Christian cannot withdraw into self or hide in the security of his own enclosure; the Church also cannot withdraw into herself, she cannot abandon her mission of evangelization and service. Jesus, at the Last Supper, asked the Father not to take the disciples out of the world, to leave them, there, in the world, but to guard them from the spirit of the world. The Church expends herself with generosity and tenderness towards the little ones and the poor: this is not the spirit of the world, this spreads light, it is salt. The Church listens to the cry of the least and the excluded, because she is aware that she is a pilgrim community called to prolong Jesus Christ’s saving presence in history.
May the Blessed Virgin help us to be salt and light in the midst of the people, bringing to everyone, by example and word, the Good News of God’s love.
FAUSTI – The salt gives flavor and preserves from corruption,it is also a symbol of wisdom, friendship and disposability to sacrifice.
RispondiEliminaThe community is salt when it has the flavor of the beatitudes.
They give us our knowledge and taste, (know = having the flavor), they preserve us from corruption, they give us wisdom, skills of friendship, willingness to pay its costs.
They are our identity as children of the Father.
Our identity is "salt of the earth". Not only it gives meaning to our personal life, but to that of every man. The filial and fraternal life is for everybody very flavor of life.
If one is not son, and is not brother to anyone, it simply is not.
It is easy to lose the flavor of Christ, that means to give own lif e in love and humility,
"Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many will cool off ”.
The seed of the Word that makes us children, it may not take root, it may dry up just when it has taked roots, it may be suffocated after growing.
The worldly wisdom is not that of the cross.
In each of u sit is great the struggle between the wisdom of love and that of selfishness.
The disciple who does not have the flavor of Christ doen't worth anything anymore and does not help anyone.
Those who "smells " of Christ is light, identity is important.
Light is the beginning of creation.
Jesus is seen by Matthew as the rising of a great light on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadows of death (4.12 to 17).
In Him we are enlightened, we come to the light of our reality: we are born as children.
Then who is enlightened , in turn, gives light to the others.
What gives flavor to the earth, enlightens the world, showing them its beauty.
The word "world" means order, structure, beauty. In the New. Testament. has a negative connotation. Indeed, "this" world is structured on the greed of having possessions,, power, look (1 Jn 2:16), with its deceptive charm that makes it looking good, beautiful, desirable.
The filial life unveils the deception, and restores the truth of its splendor.
The community is a city, the holy city, the place where we live the relations in divine and heavenly way not in devilish and hellish way .
The holy city is on top of the mountains,
as the temple of the Lord (IS 2.2).
Everyone sees it and says"Let's come , let us climb the mountain of the Lord, because He will teach us His ways and we may walk in His paths." The identity can not remain hidden, even if it doesn't make anything to be seen.
Salt can do anything but to salt , and light but to enlighten.
The question is not to salt or to enlighten, but to be salt and light.
No one can give what he does not have : what you are speaks louder than what you say.