5th Sunday in Ordinary Time – A
February 8, 2026 5:00pm
Our Lady of Grace Parish, Parkton
Salt
Here is something very familiar to all of us – a box of Morton’s salt.
We all know that salt, in its various forms, has a lot of qualities or uses. For example, if we run out of toothpaste, we can brush with a mixture of soda and salt because of salt’s cleansingqualities.
If we get a sore throat, we can gargle with salt because of its healing qualities. If we’re hungry, we can cure a ham with salt because of its preserving qualities.
We can flavor just about every food with salt. We can use it to melt ice on the sidewalk or street in the winter.
We’ve seen a lot of that in the past few weeks! And we can also use it to put out fires.
So, salt has lots of uses and these uses tell us a lot about why Jesus calls us “the salt of the earth.” His idea is that with his presence and following his way, we can be “the salt of the earth.”
“Salt of the Earth”
For example, we can flavor our families with selflessness, by thinking in terms of our well-being and not just my well-being. We can cleanse our marriages by asking for forgiveness when we have offended our spouse.
Like salt, we can heal a friendship by granting forgiveness. We can preserve the relationship with our older parents by making time to visit and assist them.
Like salt, we can melt the coldness that can creep into work relationships by a few positive words. We can put out the fires that can flare up with our children by listening to feelings and dealing with the root of the issue.
And we cannot forget this one: we can give lightness to our relationships by not taking everything too seriously and by taking some things with a grain of salt. So, there it is, a box of salt, being “the salt of the earth” – they are some of the qualities that Jesus must have in mind here.
Light
Now, in today’s passage, Jesus goes on to call us also “the light of the world.”
This leads me to recall an article that I read some years ago about a prayer breakfast. The speaker was emphasizing our duty to be “the light of the world.”
He said that he had an experience at home that really helped him understand this. He went down into his basement one day and made an interesting discovery.
Some potatoes were over in the darkest corner of the basement, and they had begun to sprout. At first, he couldn’t figure out how they had gotten enough light.
He looked around and then realized what had happened. His wife had hung a shiny kettle from the ceiling near the basement window.
That kettle was so shiny that it was reflecting the rays of the sun onto the potatoes in the dark corner. The speaker said that he learned a lot from this experience.
He could be like a shiny kettle and reflect the light from Jesus onto someone in a dark corner of life. Well, that speaker gives us a good insight into what it takes to be “the light of the world.”
“Light of the World”
The kettle had to be facing the source of light.
Because it was facing the sun, it could also reflect light to the potatoes. The idea is that we also need to be facing our spiritual light who is Jesus.
We do this primarily through prayer. Our participating in Mass on the weekend, our reading the Scripture, our doing some spiritual reading, maybe like the book Holy Moments which you will receive today as you leave church – these are important ways for facing our source of light.
If we are doing that, we can then reflect God or Jesus to others. And this will include showing the qualities of salt in our relationships – flavoring, cleansing, healing, preserving, melting the cold, putting out the fires, and yes, even taking some things with a grain of salt.
So, being “the light of the world” will make us “the salt of the earth.” That’s why Jesus has connected both images and applied them to us.
