My Dear Friends,
Father Steve often says the Rite of Baptism can also be referred to as the Rite of Naming, meaning that this is where the name that our parents have chosen for us is publicly proclaimed within the walls of the chuch where we are about to be baptized. We are not a nameless person just going through a ritual, but rather publicly named child of God and claimed by Christ as a true member of his Church. This is only the beginning of our existence within the Church and the threshold of our journey of faith.
In our Gospel today, Jesus takes that all a bit farther. Jesus does not give us advice in today’s Gospel. He gives us an identity. “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” Before we do anything, before we accomplish or stumble, Jesus names who we are because of Him.
Salt and light are not self-originating. Salt only works when it is ground down and given away. One of the many uses of salt is for it to be used as a seasoning, enhancing the flavor of what has been set before us. Light is never its own source—it burns because something else is consumed. Both are costly. Both lose themselves to give life.
This is deeply Eucharistic, and profoundly Franciscan.
St. Francis understood that Christ is the true Salt and the true Light. As salt seasons food by disappearing into it, so our Christian life is meant to be hidden in Christ, not displayed alongside Him. When the Gospel loses its savor, it is not because the world is tasteless—it is because we, as disciples, have lived up to life he has placed before us. the cross that makes salt salty.
Jesus warns us plainly: “If salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?”
In times past, salt that lost its potency was thrown onto roads to be trampled underfoot. In theological terms, this is the danger of a faith that keeps its name but loses its substance—Christianity without conversion, light without heat, devotion without obedience. Francis feared this more than poverty or persecution. He warned the brothers that nothing dulls the soul faster than comfort without repentance.
Then Jesus turns to light: “A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.”
This is not a call to perform holiness, but a reminder that true holiness is a light that shines within us all. Light reveals what is real. It exposes and heals at the same time, light does not exist for itself. Notice where Jesus places the lamp—not in the hand of the disciple, but on the lampstand of the world. The Church does not exist for its own illumination. It exists so the world may see clearly enough to find God.
And the final line anchors everything theologically: “That they may see your good deeds and give glory to your heavenly Father.”
Our good works are not moral achievements; they are sacramental signs. They point beyond themselves. If people stop at us, the light has failed. If they arrive at the Father, the light has done its work.
Francis lived this by radical humility. He called himself a “lesser brother” not as poetry, but as theology. He knew that only what is small enough can be transparent enough to let divine light pass through without distortion.
To be salt and light, then, is not to be louder or brighter. It is to be cruciform—ground down, given away, set aflame by charity. The needs lives so conformed to Christ that God becomes credible again.
So our Gospel asks us this question today: Have I trample the salt or savored the salt of my gift faith? Have I let the light of Christ within me dim or have I allowed to shine brightly? Has my life made Christ more visible to anyone? If the answer is even quietly “yes,” then the salt still has its taste, and the light has not been hidden, and that is grace enough for today. Our parents name us, but Jesus claims us.
Peace and All Good,
– Fr. Zack
