On Salt and Evangelization - 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:13-16 (13)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“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....

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Unless you want to develop heart disease, they say you’re not supposed to eat more than 2,300 milligrams of salt in a day. That’s unfortunate. Salt is delicious. Salt elevates the flavor of food. That’s why my mom gets mad at dad for salting her cooking ― “it doesn’t need salt!” And have you ever looked at the sodium numbers for your favorite restaurants? They’re humongous. They might as well measure in “light years.” Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure you can cook healthy and enjoy it. But salt is good. 

Jesus tells his disciples they’re supposed to be “the salt of the earth” (Mt 5:13). They are supposed to elevate the flavor of earthly existence. It’s an odd way for the Christian to think about life, isn’t it? It’s odd to think that Christians are called to make life delicious. They are supposed to make life flavorful ― they bring it to life, so to speak. If you want to keep the cooking metaphor: Christians aren’t supposed to be cold, dry, or bland. You don’t necessarily have to be the life of your party, but you do have to salt and cook your meat! 

There’s no shortage, of course, of Christians who do not make life delicious. The Trappists of Kentucky tell an old story about one of their monks being in a sour mood. They say that, during a period of contemplation, when silence was expected from the brothers, a certain monk’s quiet pouting was poisoning the whole community. One monk finally broke the silence: “Brother! Enough! Christians have no business being sad!”

But this holds not just among monks. It holds when Christians go out and engage with the world. Christians are too often sad and angry about the state of things. We sometimes think we’re called to convince the world it’s wrong about everything, that our vocation is to take up arms against every error. It is true that there is a time to be indignant about errors, but it’s not all the time. “The Christian is cheerful,” St. John Henry Newman used to say, “and he is easy.” The Christian’s warmth and “easiness” seasons life. And the great assertion of today’s gospel ― perhaps counterintuitively ― is that the world is won over to Jesus, not by combat, but by a little salt. A gloomy or combative Christian wins over nothing. It’s like the monk said: Christians have no business being sad. 

And that is just it. It is true that there is suffering in the world, that we are disappointed with things. We have not yet arrived at that place where God will “wipe away every tear” (Rev 21:4). But for the Christian ― even in this world ― there is so much more reason for joy than there is for sorrow or anger. For the Christian, joy is the decisive theme of the universe. And the reason the Christian is joyful is not just because she knows that the disappointments of this world are all passing away. Indeed, the Christian is never overcome because the cause of her joy is Christ. The cause of the Christian’s joy is her constant contact with the one who makes life glorious. Joy is the last word. [1]

When people encounter this kind of joy in Christians ― this kind of hope ― life becomes delicious. The salt of a Christian reveals that life has flavors they never noticed before, that life is glorious to live. When people encounter this kind of joy, their life is elevated. They want to be around Christians. They want to be Christians.

Jesus says that, one way or another, Christians are salt. “But if salt loses its taste… it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot” (Mt 5:13). Either we will season the entire world or we will be thrown down and trampled upon. In short, if you’re not seasoning ― if you don’t make the world delicious ― people will discard you. You’ll either elevate people’s lives ― you’ll give them hope and a reason to live differently ― or they’ll toss you thoughtlessly on the sidewalk so as not to slip on the ice. Put another way, you’ll either make Jesus deliciously present in people’s lives, or you’ll see him once more tossed to the earth, forgotten and unnoticed as people trample about their days. 

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Endnotes:

[1] See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2001), 464.

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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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"They Were Fishermen" - 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 4:12-23

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested,
he withdrew to Galilee.
He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea,
in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali,
that what had been said through Isaiah the prophet
might be fulfilled:
Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light,
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death
light has arisen.
From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers,
Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew,
casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.
He said to them,
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
At once they left their nets and followed him.
He walked along from there and saw two other brothers,
James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.
He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father
and followed him.
He went around all of Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness among the people.

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Did you ever notice that Christianity has a thing with fishing? There are some pretty vivid examples in the Old Testament. The prophets, for instance, often threaten Israel’s enemies by insisting God will “put hooks in their jaws… and draw them up out of the midst of their streams… and cast them forth into the wilderness” (Ez 29:4-5). In the Book of Tobit, there’s a wild story about Sarah’s cousin who reels in a massive fish that, at the same time, is trying to swallow him whole, all while the Archangel Raphael cheers him on (Tob 6:1-5). They can’t all be winners, of course. Jonah was bested by a fish, gulped up by some mysterious creature of the sea (Jnh 1:17).

The Christian scriptures, too, are chock-full of references to fish and fishing. “What father among you,” Jesus said, “if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent” (Lk 11:11)? We should not be surprised, then, to find Peter and Andrew in today’s Gospel “casting a net into the sea” (Mt 4:18) and their friends James and John in a boat nearby. This is the Judeo-Christian thing. And Jesus stuck with the fishing metaphors throughout his ministry. He compared the kingdom of heaven to “a net thrown into the sea gathering fish of every kind” (Mt 13:47). He even told Peter once that he’d find a shekel for the Temple tax in the mouth of his first catch of the day (Mt 17:27). Clearly fishing was important to these people.

In his novel The River Why, David James Duncan joked about how the apostle John ― a fisherman by trade ― insists on telling us in his Gospel the precise number of fish the apostles caught the day they spotted Jesus, risen again from the dead, by the Sea of Tiberias: “Peter went and hauled the net full of fish ashore. There were one hundred and fifty three of them” (Jn 21:11). Mind you, he doesn’t say “a boatload” of fish, or “more than a hundred,” or “nearly a gross.” It’s precisely one hundred and fifty three fish. As Duncan jokes, in spite of all their excitement over Jesus’ resurrection, the apostles were not about to let their catch go uncounted: “one, two, three, four…” ― tossing fish from one pile to the next — all the way up to one hundred and fifty three. [1] This number must have been logged somewhere or so seared into John’s memory that ― some forty years later ― he could pull it out without problem for the composition of his Gospel: “One-hundred. Fifty. Three. Fish.” This statistic was that important to them. Today’s Gospel summarizes it perfectly: “they were fishermen” (Mt 4:18), plain and simple.

But think about that for a moment: the risen and glorified Jesus ― Lord of the Universe ― is standing on the shore with the apostles having just conquered death. And what are the apostles doing? They’re counting fish. “Seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight.” The point is this: I don’t think Jesus was offended by it. In fact, I strongly suspect he helped them count. Today’s Gospel reveals that Jesus first called these men when they were out fishing. Indeed, Jesus draws near to people in their particular identities. God kneels down to count fish with men. 

This was the very sea where these apostles first heard their identities being called in a new direction. This is where Jesus told them “I will make you fishers of men” (Mt 4:19). And it’s here, on this exact same shore, that Jesus, now resurrected, is bringing this call to fulfillment. It’s here, tossing fish into wriggling piles, that he sends them again. 

“One hundred fifty two! One hundred fifty three!!” Did they all smile at each other, amazed? I’ve often wondered what Jesus said next. Perhaps he said it again? “Peter, Andrew, James, John. Now, you must be fishers of men.”

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Endnotes:

[1] David James Duncan, The River Why (New York: Back Way Books, 2016), 19-20.

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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. His columns are archived here.

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What Makes a Family Holy? - The Feast of the Holy Family

Note: Through Advent and Christmas, I have decided to focus these reflections on the Virgin Mary and not on the weekly Gospel reading.

What Makes a Family Holy?

There is a funny and somewhat surprising story tucked away in Mark’s Gospel. After publicly healing a man of his withered hand, Mark reports that an enormous crowd began following Jesus (Mk 3:8). Many brought their sick relatives to be cured (3:10). The crowds pressed thickly upon Jesus and he was unable to rest a moment that day. We read that it became “impossible for him even to eat” (Mk 3:20). But amidst all this fervor, we learn of an odd detail. Jesus’ own relatives had caught wind of the commotion and were ― of all things ― embarrassed of him. The text says that “when his family heard about this they set out to seize him, for they said, ‘he is out of his mind’” (Mk 3:21). The Son of God was apparently acting in a way unbecoming of the family name. 

We should not be imagining that it was Mary or Joseph who were ashamed of their son. Indeed, most scholars suspect that Joseph ― not mentioned at all once Jesus begins his public ministry ― had by this time passed away. And it was Mary who once prompted Jesus to turn water into wine at a wedding in Cana (Jn 2). Mary was not ashamed of Jesus causing a commotion. Indeed, in the story from Mark’s Gospel, we learn just a few verses later that it was probably Jesus’ cousins who came to protect the family’s reputation from any further embarrassment (Mk 3:31). 

When we celebrate today’s “Feast of the Holy Family,” we don’t usually think of Jesus’ broader family. We’re even less likely to imagine that Jesus might not have been well-liked by all the cousins. And, more than that, when we think of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph we often think of their family life as the kind of thing that should be depicted on an ornament, as something quite cozy. We imagine them gathered around a warm hearth untroubled by the sinful world around them.

On the contrary, part of what makes the Holy Family holy is that it wasn’t the kind of thing that could be depicted on an ornament. Indeed, no real family’s daily life is the kind of thing that should ever be depicted on an ornament. And the Holy Family was a real family. That means they had real relatives who really were whackos. Just like your family. Part of what makes the Holy Family holy is that they didn’t isolate themselves from that whackiness, but were in the fray.

An important detail: when Jesus’ relatives came to collect him, Mary was right in their midst. Someone from the crowd even told Jesus: “your mother and family are outside looking for you” (Mk 3:32). Whackos or not, these were Mary’s people. This was her family. She was in the fray with these cousins who were embarrassed of her son. Did she have to listen to them apologizing to those who’d gathered? “I’m so sorry for this. He’s out of his mind.” Was she admonished by her relatives? “Didn’t you teach him better than this?”

This was the Holy Family’s family, and ― odd as it may seem ― that family was embarrassed of Jesus. But Mary did not cut them out of her life, safely retreating to those people who accept her. The Holy Family would not have been very holy had it remained walled-off from the world’s unholiness, had it remained contentedly around the hearth at Nazareth. Holiness is not closed in on itself. It wants to go outside itself, even into very dark places. Indeed, the holiness of the Holy Family was not for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph alone. It was also for those cousins who were embarrassed of Jesus. 

Yes, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph lived lives of extraordinary holiness. They were the “Holy Family.” But we should not imagine that the coming together of their lives formed some sort of impenetrable bubble around their home. The bitterness of the world broke into their lives. It crucified one of them. And he left his home knowing it would. 

The world is as embarrassed of Jesus today as it was when he was causing a commotion in ancient Israel. This is no reason to cut those cousins out of your life. On the contrary, it is reason to model your family after the Holy Family, to remain close to those who are convinced you all ― like Jesus ― “are out of your minds.” Click here to subscribe to these reflections by email