In his extended commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, St. Augustine says that Our Lord has laid out for us “the perfect standard of the Christian life.” Prepared from all eternity, it is the most perfect sermon. We should be hanging on the Word’s every word. From beginning to end Our Lord has one goal in mind, to give the blueprint for sainthood. The outline is made in the Beatitudes and the “how-to” follows. The first words then of the “how-to” section are vital to understanding what it means to be a Christian and therefore merit our close scrutiny.
After defining Christians as those who find their joy in being persecuted, Our Lord tells His disciples they must be salty; “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing anymore but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men” (Mt 5:13). To modern ears the Saline Commandment might strike us as a bit odd, especially because we only think of salt as a seasoning. But Our Lord had something deeper in mind making this a most perfect metaphor for the Christian mind, something that we can begin to grasp more clearly if we look at salt itself.
The Master of Metaphor
First, we must admit that Our Lord was a master of metaphor and the reasoning for this is simple. Our Lord did not need to search for a metaphor to describe the Christian, He simply created the metaphor. Salt may have plenty of practical uses (all of which could be accomplished another way if Our Lord so decreed), but salt is what it is precisely because Our Lord wanted to use it to reveal the truth to His disciples. In this case the truth of what it means to be a true disciple. Catholics used to grasp this intuitively because they had a sacramental vision of reality. Thanks to an unhealthy scientific excess, we have lost that ability and need to regain it. That begins by resisting the temptation to simply say salt is “nothing but” Sodium Chloride and to probe deeper into its meaning.
Salt itself is formed by the evaporation of salt water. The process of evaporation involves two outside elements—sun and air or wind. Salt cannot escape the sea water without these two things. Now in sacramental language, the seas water is associated with chaos. The Sun is Christ and the Wind is the Holy Spirit. Putting them all together we find that His disciples cannot escape the chaos of the world without Our Lord and the Holy Spirit. This is to make sure that the “try-hards” recognize that the Beatitudes are absolutely impossible without the infusion of grace. Salty Christians then are formed.
The Real Saline Solution
We can glean more of Our Lord’s meaning, especially what He means when He calls them “salt of the earth” by examining how salt was commonly used. Prior to refrigeration, salt was the primary preservative for food. By reducing the water molecules in the food through osmosis, bacteria had no medium in which to grow. What little bacteria did land on the food would die because it attacked their DNA. In short, salt was used to stop decay.
So too it is with the Christian in the world. Our Lord is saying that once they become salt, the disciples keep the world from decay. This role of Christians is one that is easily overlooked but one that is worth examining more closely.
When God saw all of the evil that was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah, He told Abraham that He was going to destroy it. But it wasn’t just as a punishment for the evil that He threatened to destroy it, but because there was no salt to keep it from decaying. He could find no righteous men to preserve it. Sodom and Gomorrah were fully decayed and their destruction was inevitable. Had their been salt, they would have been preserved.
Christians are “salt of the earth” precisely because they preserve it and enhance its flavor. All around us we see signs of decay, but true Christians can slow that decay by their very presence. It is saints that change the world, not primarily by their actions, but by their sanctity. The solution to our cultural crisis is simple—be a saint. It is saints who have turned every culture around and it is saints that will turn ours around. Saints are those who are committed to God’s will no matter what and those are the ones that He uses to season the world.
Because of its dehydrating qualities salt was often used in war as a means of destroying crops. So too God will use some of His salt to destroy the crops of the Evil One. As His salt we must, each and every one of us, be prepared to be poured out on the ground. Martyrdom is never really that far away for the Christian and we must be prepared for it to come. But even if it doesn’t God’s salt must continue to keep the bacteria from spreading from within their own sphere of influence. The thing about salt is that we immediately recognize its presence as well as its absence. We must be salty then.
Before closing, let us take to heart Jesus’ words regarding losing our savor. For salt cannot actually lose its savor without ceasing to be salt. Despite the fact that we no longer use this language, it is important for us to do everything we can to stay in a state of grace. If we lose our savor, it can be restored by becoming salt again, but we are at a great risk for being trampled underfoot. All the saints prayed for the gift of perseverance so let us join their litany to stay salty.