Fr Toby Lees OP: On being salt and light

Slim Dusty with Golden Guitar - Wiki Image

Fr Toby Lees gave this homily at Mass on Sunday, 4 February) at St Dominic's Priory, Haverstock Hill, north London.

My father was from Australia, where, as in the US, one of the most popular styles of music is Country and Western.

One of his favourite country singers was a man called Slim Dusty. Now Slim Dusty, recorded over 100 albums in his lifetime. My mother used to complain that all his songs sounded the same, and that he'd done a hundred albums of dirge. I think when you've recorded over a 100 albums you're entitled to repeat your sound a few times over.

It's the same thing for a preacher, we don't have to always be original or novel, we just have to keep on preaching repentance, conversion, and God's great love for us . . . again, and again, and again. The fortunate thing for the preacher is that Christ's message is most definitely not a dirge, it is a cause for cheer. Life without Christ is the dirge, life without Christ is the lamentation with no hope. The Christian song may have verses of lamentation, but the chorus is joyful and the ending triumphant.

Now amongst all the songs Slim Dusty sung, which must have been at least a thousand with all those albums perhaps his most famous and most popular was 'A pub with no beer' in which he sings,

It's lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night we'll hear the wild dingoes call
But there's nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer

The stockman rides up with his dry dusty throat
He breasts up to the bar and pulls a wad from his coat
But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer
As the barman says sadly the pub's got no beer

Now, I've never been to a pub with no beer, but it strikes me that it wouldn't just be a sad thing - though it would be that - it wouldn't really be a pub at all. Just like, without intending to be too political, vegan bacon is not bacon. Maybe it's delicious, I don't know, but it's not delicious bacon.

In a similar way, salt that has lost its saltiness isn't really salt at all. I don't know what it is, but it is not salt.

Chocolate that doesn't taste of chocolate isn't really chocolate, or to use an especially English example tea that doesn't taste of tea isn't really tea.

Now no beer in the pub, non-chocolatey chocolate, non-teay-tea all these things are sad, but salt that has lost its saltiness is a real problem.

Across much of the world in the present day and especially at the time of Christ, salt is not just about seasoning, it's not just about making things taste better, it's an absolutely crucial preservative. So much food would go off, go to waste without the aid of salt. I actually wasn't completely sure how this works, so I looked it up. For those of you in former position, what happens is that the salt draws out the water from the food and with less water, microbes cannot develop and food does not go off. It's a bonus, I think salty cured meat tastes so good.

And we also now know that salt is not just essential for preserving food, but, in fact, that the body cannot function without salt. All the mechanisms in our cells would cease to function without salt.

Salt, then, is vital and salt that has lost its saltiness is just not salt.

What though has all this to do with the Christian? What has this to do with you and me? How are we salty? How might we lose our saltiness?

Five years ago preaching on this very gospel for the close of the Dominican Order's 800th year Jubilee, the Holy Father, Pope Francis, contrasted Christian living (as salt and light) with what he called 'the carnival of human curiosity', a 'pseudo-festive superficiality', a 'culture of the ephemeral'.

This world the Pope describes is a flat world of earthly ambition and light entertainment, interesting and intriguing, but rarely awesome, a world that rarely looks up at the stars in awe, but is more likely to look at celebrity stars on a screen, a world that has lost its sense of the transcendent.

It is the world of Lady Gaga's, 'Baby I was born this way', a world in which our inclinations inevitably lead to their corresponding actions and where sin must therefore be affirmed rather than battled against with the power of Christ.

Christ is the salt and Christ is the light. Christ is the salt that enters into us at baptism and drives out sin. Christ is the light that shines in the darkness and makes visible what was hidden.

Now, without grace, without Christ, it is true, as Lady Gaga sang, we are born this way . . . born this way to sin and to die. And the world and its devils say settle for this, nothing more can be expected of you don't, don't despair, rather rejoice in this.

But as Sheryl Crow sang, 'If it makes you happy, why do you look so sad'. We live in perhaps the most libertarian society of the past few centuries, at least, and we have sky-rocketing levels of mental health issues and more and more people report being depressed and in a permanent state of sadness. What we thought would make us happy is making us sad.

And why? Because we should desire more. As CS Lewis said the problem is not that we desire too much, but too little. He wrote in a magnificent sermon entitled, The Weight of Glory:

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Our world wants cheap grace, it wants mercy without repentance, which is just a comfortable form of lying. It wants to split kindness and truth which leads to the sadness of sin and makes a mockery of the Cross as the price for our salvation.

This is the world that elevates our conscience, that sings, like Sheryl Crow in another line of the song, 'if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad', this is a world that proclaims the primacy of the conscience with its hands over its ears so that God cannot speak into it and inform it and mold it, and in doing so makes gods of ourselves and our desires. It's the world that says no salt, no light, I was born this way.

In the Gospel Jesus is not exhorting those who follow Him to become salt and light of the world, He is exhorting them not to stop being salt and light. To be salt and light is the new nature of the baptized Christian. It's the new normal with Christ. His word to us are a warning, a warning not to become a name that has lost its nature, not to stop being salt and light.

How might this happen?

Through infidelity to Christ we will (as salt) lose our savour and be thrown out and tread upon, or (as light) be put under a bushel and presumably extinguished.

I remember a good friend of mine who was an evangelical and was received into the Catholic Church saying to me that there were so many things that she loved about being in the Church now, but she had one criticism. She thought the preaching she heard was beautiful, that it was rich (this was no compliment to me, not yet a deacon) but she said she was rarely challenged.

It's a risk for priests that we water down truths to become more popular and so in watery teaching the salt dissolves, and what was good salt, and what was good pure water, becomes salty water, which is not nearly so life-giving, unless you're a certain type of fish or a crocodile.

Jesus says, 'The Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than Light, because their deeds were evil' (John 3:19). And Pope Francis warns, 'Woe to salt that loses its savour! Woe to the Church that loses her savour!'

The Truth that is Christ is a hard truth, because to come into the light of the Resurrection we must also know His Cross. As Flannery O'Connor observed, truth does not depend upon its palatability. The disciples didn't like the sound of the Cross, but Christ gave them the strength and the love to embrace it for love of Him and for love of those they were called to love.

The Love that is the Spirit is a hard love to accept, but it is the only Love that makes all loves possible. Our savour, our light is from fidelity to Christ. Only such Love and Truth can be recognized as coming from the Father, that men may see your good works and give glory to the Father in Heaven!

The lives of the saints show that when Truth and Love are embraced, joy and Christian cheer follow, even in difficulty. The Christian who abandons Truth, who abandons Love, loses their saltiness, ceases to be light. But the one who embraces them lives differently, lives joyfully.

Now Slim Dusty might have sung about the drear of a pub with no beer, but our lament should be a Christian with no cheer.

Jesus has called us, Jesus has lived for us, Jesus has died for us, Jesus invites us into His mercy, Jesus invites us to share His mission, His life.. Jesus no longer calls us servants, but friends. We have cause for joy, we have reason to be of good cheer.

It's joyful to be united beggar, prince, one and all

Around the altar in response to Christ's call

There's nothing so joyful, nothing so dear

As to be a Christian and share in God's good cheer

Fr Toby is Priest Director of Radio Maria England, you can listen online: https://radiomariaengland.uk/

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