Something is lost when the spiritual identity of ‘salt’ and ‘light’ is translated into the activity of doing good works. We often harbour a pedestrian notion of goodness. Doing ‘good’ is a wooden application of principle to unruly situations. We seldom think of it as entailing creative engagement with the wily world. Yet the people of salt and light are called upon to envision and execute experiments. When the experiments fail, it is not time to retreat to old ways, but to try new experiments. ‘Good basketballs for good people.’
When we realise our identities as salt and light, we begin to have faith in the world as a corollary of faith in God. God’s energies are directed to the betterment of the world. So God’s people are driven by the same purpose. The world for all its recalcitrance is in the process of becoming the good creation. We are the flavour and fire of this development. Think big. Think new. Think creative.
Teilhard de Chardin, mystic and scientist, was afraid people would lose their zest and passion for the development of the world. So he tried to uncover this zest and passion as the deep desire of their hearts. He wrote that the “only worthwhile joy is that of co-operating as one individual atom in the final establishment of a world.” When his friends said they did not feel this drive in them, he said to them, “You are not searching to the full depth of your heart and mind. And that, moreover, is why the cosmic sense and faith in the world is dormant in you.” Jesus’ words that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world are meant to awaken our cosmic sense and our faith in the world. The awakened sense unfolds into experiments on every level.
May God bless us all in peace.
With love and prayers, Fr Michael
St Teresa’s Prayer
Christ has
No body on earth but yours;
No hands but yours;
No feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes
Through which he is to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet
With which he is to go about
Doing good;
Yours are the hands
With which he is to bless now.