Last Sunday we covered the Beatitudes. Their sole aim, as we navigate through the treacheries of life, is to prepare us for eternity. This preparation does not take place in a vacuum. Instead, we are placed directly into the world to cooperate in the work of our salvation as well as to establish the Kingdom of Christ. The reminder of John the Evangelist that Christians are in the world but are not of the world sums up the attitude that Christians are to take with regard to their mission.
The call to be both light and salt is not to focus attention on us per se but rather to highlight our roles in illuminating the world and flavouring the earth. Yet, we are aware that these metaphors of light and salt might be a bit problematic today. There is too much artificial light in our environment. Light pollution has Man confused between light and darkness to the point that the clock revolves around a “permanent” day. Furthermore, our food is also loaded with salt that high blood pressure has become a major health issue for society. Our tastebuds have been unhealthily primed to crave for more and more enhanced flavours.
How then do we appreciate these metaphors?
Firstly, to explain the function of light, we might refer to the rite of baptism. Either the baptised adult or the god-parent of the baptised infant is given a candle lit from the Paschal torch. The exhortation given to the person who receive the light comes from the narrative of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. “May they keep the flame alive in their hearts. When the Lord comes, may they go out to meet Him with all the saints in the heavenly Kingdom”. The light is kept burning brightly through the consistency of our faith and action.
One of the best illustrators of what it means to be a light is our political scene. The present motto for public life, not just here in this country, but everywhere, is basically to “never get caught”. Once a scandal breaks out, the so-called honourable thing for someone caught is to resign.[1] If one probes further, the main inclination to be “honourable” is that this course of action is still coming from that space where there is supposedly a gap between a politician’s public behaviour and his private morality. There still remains a chasm because we still maintain that morality is merely an individual’s private business whereas his public personality is simply a façade. For that pretence to hold, one should never be caught.
One might be forgiven if one were to think that this so-called credibility criterion, that is, the honourable resignation is derived from a Christian ideal. It is not. This benchmark or yardstick of honourability ignores the painful truth of life after the Fall. Everyone is a sinner because no one is born immaculate. A true leader is not a person without a misstep. An authentic leader can also make mistakes because credibility and integrity, as important as they are, do not mean that we have never made mistakes. Mistakes or sins merely highlight the reality that we are saints in progress and that credibility and integrity represent our attempt to close the chasm between our profession and our personality. We ought to live privately as if we were public personalities.
And this brings us to how we as salt can enhance and flavour our community. The useless salt to be trampled underfoot after losing its purity is not a repudiation of our true selves but simply a reminder that while we are sinners, we are supposed to maintain our flavour through a regimen of personal purification. Each one is a work-in-progress.
Thus, it is a heresy to believe that one has to be perfect before daring to stand up or to open one’s mouth. Since no one is conceived sinless, except Jesus and Mary, waiting for a perfect world-class person before one starts to speak or serve might take forever. The sad reality is when everyone is waiting for everyone to be ethically upright, the general standard in morality drops. Why? Instead of morality being right or wrong independent of the person uttering it, we have reduced the measure or standard of right and wrong to our credibility. As long as I am not credible, I have no right to state what is objective wrong. To give an example: As long as I have killed I lose the right to assert that killing is wrong. I would be a hypocrite and have no “standing” to advise anyone regarding the immorality of killing. In this case, even the devil can state the truth proving that credibility whilst crucial is not the standard of morality but the action itself has a morality that commands both the holy and the hypocrite. Thus, our task, if we were to use a business term, is to be a value-added person in the community.
It does not mean being perfect persons. Despite our brokenness, we are still disciples cooperating with grace for our salvation and as well as participating in Christ’s programme of building up His Kingdom. Sometimes Catholics are led to think that being light and salt is a mission within the Church. But that is not the focus of our Christian call.
The vocation of a Christian is out there. There is a world waiting to be shaped into Christ’s Kingdom. It would be safe and comforting to limit our engagement to Church activities etc. Whereas the Kingdom that is waiting for our participation is where we live, in our Tamans and condos, where we play, in our pitches and stadia, where we mingle, in our malls and our food courts, where we study, in our schools and universities, where we work, in our offices and factories. These are the areas where the Beatitudes are to be embraced and the Kingdom to be established.
It is indeed a Herculean task. We crave the security of familiarity because it is easier and comforting. When we are out there, we need to be on our toes, like driving courteously on our roads and byways, especially if you have a rosary dangling from your rear-view mirror. We are all failures, one and all, from popes to priests, from married to monastic, from parishioners to prisoners. Everyone is a failure. Everyone is a sinner. Our credibility does not come from managing our public bearing and our private behaviour as if they were separated. Instead our credibility must come from the perspective of conversion because every sinner has a future and every saint has a past. By walking our talk, we are transformed or “Christified” through the alignment of both our public and private personae. We grow as committed Christians, faithful images of Christ to light the world brighter and to enrich the earth better.
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[1] The point of resignation has no connexion to forgiveness because the issue is not about making a mistake as suggested by the adage, “to err is human and to forgive divine”.
