CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - At the end of today's Gospel passage from St. Mark (Mk. 9: 41 -50), after Jesus emphasized the importance of avoiding all temptations to sin, Jesus offered what appears to be a cryptic admonition to his disciples:
"Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor? Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another."
What did He mean?
The Jerome Biblical Commentary reflecting on the passage notes, \"Salt and fire suggest the purification the disciples will undergo through persecution and suffering.\"
The Venerable Bede suggested a further insight, \"Everyone will be salted with fire, says Jesus, because spiritual wisdom must purify all the elect of any kind of corruption through carnal desire. Or he may be speaking of the fire of tribulation, which exercises the patience of the faithful to enable them to reach perfection\"
These words are offered within the context of the Lord's instructions on true greatness. They follow right after he had placed a child in their midst in order to show them what it meant to become the servant of all. The context directs us, his contemporary disciples, to reflect upon our response to the Lord's invitation to follow Him.
We are salted with fire, through the struggles and hardships we inevitably face as we seek to live the fullness of the Gospel as taught by the Catholic Church. We are all called to holiness within our own state in life and vocation. In a culture and an age which increasingly rejects God and His Ways, we are to live differently. This will offend many who have been seduced by the age.
We will struggle as we seek to cooperate with grace and grow in holiness, in order to reflect more fully the character of Christ. We will deal daily with what the Tradition calls concupiscence. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
"St. John distinguishes three kinds of covetousness or concupiscence: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life. (1 John 2:16) In the Catholic catechetical tradition, the ninth commandment forbids carnal concupiscence; the tenth forbids coveting another\'s goods."
Etymologically, \"concupiscence\" can refer to any intense form of human desire. Christian theology has given it a particular meaning: the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason. The apostle St. Paul identifies it with the rebellion of the \"flesh\" against the \"spirit.\" (Cf. Gal 5:16,17,24; Eph 2:3) Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin. It unsettles man\'s moral faculties and, without being in itself an offense, inclines man to commit sins."(CCC #2514, 2515)
So we will face ongoing struggle, both within and without. That is if we truly want to respond more fully to the Lord's call in our own lives. We are being salted and we are called to become salt. In a compilation of his homilies entitled Friends with God, St. Jose Maria Escriva prays:
\"May Our Lord be able to use us so that, placed as we are at all the cross-roads of the world - and at the same time placed in God - we become salt, leaven and light. Yes, you are to be in God, to enlighten, to give flavor, to produce growth and new life. But don\'t forget that we are not the source of this light: we only reflect it.\" (St. Jose Maria Escriva, Friends of God, 250)
Jesus used salt as an image in his parables because salt was used in multiple ways which are not as common in our own experience. Salt was used to preserve and purify food as well as to flavor and to cure it. His hearers knew this.
St. Matthew records these words: \"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." (Matt. 5: 13)
We have been baptized into Jesus Christ and now live our lives in His Body, the Church, of which we are members. He lives His life in and through us. He reveals Himself to a world which desperately needs Him - through us.
This is why we need to be continually salted with fire. So that we can more fully reflect His Divine Life for others. We also need to become salt for a world which has lost its flavor and is decaying. We need to help to preserve the good, cure, and hold back the decay caused by sin.
The Father still loves the world and sends His Son to save it. (John 3: 16) That continues through you and me. He has placed us in the world with redemptive purpose. Jesus now walks into the world through His Body, the Church, of which we are members. We live in the Church and go into the world.
As Christians we are called to love the world as God loves the world. One of the titles that the Fathers of the Church used to describe the Church was - the world ...
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