You are the Salt of the Earth

Fr. Scott Haynes
May 12
6 min read

Fr. Scott Haynes

A Meditation on the Sermon on the Mount

On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men”(Matthew 5:13).

This is not a gentle image. Christ does not call His disciples the decoration of the earth, the approval of the earth, or the echo of the earth. He calls them “the salt of the earth.” Salt preserves what would otherwise decay. It cleanses. It gives strength and savor to what is dull, lifeless, and corrupting. At times, it even stings, especially when it touches an open wound. Yet that sting is not hatred. It is the sign that something living is being protected from corruption. Salt is not meant to disappear into decay and then call that surrender love. It is meant to resist decay because true love refuses to make peace with spiritual death.

Nor does Our Lord stop with the image of salt. He immediately speaks of light. “You are the light of the world,” He says. “A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid” (Matthew 5:14). Then He adds that no one lights a candle in order to hide it beneath a bushel basket, but places it upon a candlestick so that it may shine for all in the house (Matthew 5:15). In other words, Christian truth is not given to be muffled, hidden, apologized for, or buried beneath the heavy basket of public approval. The disciple of Christ is not only called to preserve the world from corruption; he is also called to shine before it. Salt must not lose its savor. Light must not be hidden. Both images say the same thing with holy force: the Christian must not become useless by becoming invisible.

Yet in our own time there is a powerful temptation to hide the light precisely in the name of unity. The commandments of God are sometimes treated as though they were embarrassing relics from a less enlightened age. The moral teaching of Christ is spoken of as though it were too severe for ordinary men to bear. Those who cling to the unchanging doctrine of the Church and the perennial moral law are sometimes made to feel like obstacles to progress, while those who experiment with new moral theories are given wide room to wander wherever novelty leads them. A strange inequality can arise even within the household of faith: fidelity is disciplined, while innovation is indulged; reverence is scrutinized, while rebellion is excused; the children who still believe their mother are treated as troublemakers in their mother’s house.

There is a false fellowship that asks a man to purchase peace by betraying his conscience. St. Thomas More saw this with terrible clarity. In Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, the Duke of Norfolk urges More to go along with the others and accept the oath “for fellowship.” More answers with one of the sharpest lines ever placed on his lips: “And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?” The line is dramatic, not a verbatim transcript from More’s trial, but it captures the moral force of his witness. More understood that there are moments when fellowship becomes a temptation. There are moments when the crowd asks not for charity, but for surrender. There are moments when “going along” means placing the soul beneath the authority of the age rather than beneath the authority of God.

That is the question for every generation: will you go to hell with me for fellowship?

The world has always had its oaths. Not all of them are written on parchment. Some are whispered in classrooms, boardrooms, parishes, families, publishing houses, and public squares. “Just say the words.” “Just change the tone.” “Just do not mention that part.” “Just call it love.” “Just stand with us.” “Just bless what everyone else has already accepted.” It is the old temptation under a new costume: fellowship without fidelity, unity without truth, peace without the Cross.

But are we really to say that the law of God is unreasonable? Are we to say that the commandments of Christ are impossible to live? Are we to speak as though God’s moral law were oppressive, while the passions of fallen man are liberating? This would be a terrible reversal of the Gospel. Sin is not freedom. Sin is slavery. It promises self-expression but gives bondage. It promises dignity but leaves the soul ashamed. It promises companionship but slowly isolates the sinner from God, from truth, and finally even from himself. Christ does not give commandments because He despises our freedom. He gives commandments because He loves us totally and desires to rescue our freedom from captivity.

The law of God is not a chain placed upon the soul. It is the road by which the soul comes home. “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Our Lord does not place love and obedience in opposition, as though love were warm and obedience were cold. He binds them together. To love Christ is to keep His commandments, and to keep His commandments is to walk in the liberty of the children of God. The world says, “Cast off the yoke, and you will be free.” Christ says, “Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me” (Matthew 11:29). His yoke does not crush the soul. It steadies it. It teaches the soul how to walk straight after years of wandering.

This is why the Christian cannot accept a new moral language that quietly redefines mercy as permission, accompaniment as approval, and unity as silence before sin. True mercy does not tell the paralytic to remain on his mat. True mercy says, “Arise.” True mercy does not tell the woman taken in adultery that adultery no longer matters. It says, “Go, and now sin no more” (John 8:11). True mercy does not flatter weakness. It heals it. True mercy does not lower the mountain of holiness until no one has to climb. It gives grace to climb.

Pope Pius XII warned against this deeper danger in Humani Generis. He saw that false opinions do not always begin by openly denying the faith. Sometimes they begin more subtly, by weakening confidence in the permanence of doctrine, by treating theological novelty as though it were automatically superior to inherited truth, and by making the formulas of faith seem unstable before the demands of modern thought. The danger is not only that one doctrine is denied. The greater danger is that the very idea of stable doctrine begins to dissolve. Once that happens, the commandments of God soon appear negotiable, and the moral teaching of Christ is treated as raw material to be reshaped by each new generation.

But the Church is not the servant of the age. She is the servant of Christ. She may speak to every age, suffer in every age, and translate the Gospel into the language of every age, but she may not surrender the Gospel to the spirit of any age. The candle does not ask permission from the darkness before it shines. Salt does not consult decay before it preserves. The Church does not ask the world which commandments may still be preached.

The real question, then, is not whether the Christian should love his age. Of course he should. He must love it enough to suffer for it, pray for it, teach it, and call it back from the edge of ruin. The real question is whether he will flatter his age. Will he hide the light beneath the bushel basket of respectability? Will he let the salt lose its savor in order to be praised as compassionate? Will he call slavery freedom because the slaves have decorated their chains?

St. Thomas More answers from the Tower. The martyrs answer from their prisons. The saints answer from their hidden lives of costly fidelity. Above all, Christ answers from the Cross.

No.

Christ gives us another way. He commands us to be salt. He commands us to be light. He commands us to love without lying, to suffer without surrendering, and to shine without asking the darkness to approve.