5th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Salt flavors food as Jesus tells us, referring to Job who, in his sufferings, writes (Job 6:6):
Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt…
The biblical teaching on salt, is both literal and symbolic. Literally, salt changes the flavor of food. In a symbolic understanding, salt transforms our sacrificial offering to God from merely human origin into a mystical reality. God receives what is human and transforms it into something divine. Salt mystically symbolizes God’s grace transforming our lives so we may live in the covenant.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, salt symbolizes the covenant. Delving deeply into covenantal theology, the key to all Biblical Interpretation, salt symbolizes God’s sharing his life with us. He shares Himself and in exchange we are to share ourselves with Him. This partaking and sharing in God’s life happens though adoption. Being adopted, becoming heirs of the Kingdom, is the essence of covenantal theology.
Covenantal Theology explains God’s relationship with his people. We are the family of God and being God’s family, He gives us his identity. He forms and molds us by inviting us to partake and share in his Divine Life. He longs to relate to us as Father with his first-born son. Scripture also reveals, He longs to be united with us as Bridegroom to his bride. He longs to adopt us into his life and unite Himself to us through a mystical marriage, so we become heirs of divine life and love.
Because salt symbolizes the covenant in the Old Testament, each sacrifice offered by the priest in the Old Testament was sprinkled with salt
You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing.
Lev 2:3
Not only was salt to be sprinkled on the grain offerings, but also sprinkled on the animal sacrifices:
When you have finished purifying it, you shall offer a bull from the herd without blemish and a ram from the flock without blemish. You shall present them before the LORD, and the priests shall sprinkle salt on them and offer them up as a burnt offering to the LORD.
Ex 43:24
Every offering to God is a salted as it a sign of covenant. Salt symbolizes this perpetual and everlasting relationship (Num 18:19).
Salt was a commodity and expensive. It was precious. All the sacrificial offerings of the Old Testament needed to be sprinkled for salt gave them their authority, not the authority of the priest or person offering the sacrifice, but God’s authority. Salting symbolized the offering’s total dedicated to God. Salt also purified the offering for it cost the priest part of himself. As a total gift, the sacrificial offering becomes a treasured gift, reminding the priest and the people of the precious gift God gave to them, Himself.
Oddly, Jesus tells us that if salt loses its flavor, throw it out. Yet, salt does not lose its flavor. It can’t. Obviously, Jesus is talking about the salt representing the covenant. If sacrifices and offerings are not sprinkled with salt, if they do not enhance and solidify the covenant giving glory to God, then they are not pleasing to the Lord. Why? The covenantal exchange is broken. God is not part of the offering. It merely pleases the people–not God.
When Jesus tells the apostles to be the Salt of the Earth, it is more than just a spice to add flavor to life. Christians are to live in New Covenant and open ourselves to receive the grace—salt—that Jesus offers. Being the salt of the earth, filled with divine life, Christians become the sign of the covenant. God dwells with his people. He dwells in our hearts. In exchange, we offer ourselves as the living sacrifice protecting the perpetual covenant God made with us his people. As St. Paul tells us,
I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Rom 12:1
Jesus, in the New Testament, tells us that our offerings must be salted, that is inspired by God, otherwise they are not pleasing. Brant Pitre comments on the eucharistic identity of our offering as the means to purify our sacrifice, that is ourselves:
The Christian vocation is not just to offer sacrifice to God, but to become a sacrificial offering to the Lord for the salvation of the world in union with Christ Who is going to offer Himself on the cross for the salvation of the world.
Catholic Productions Fifth Sunday Year A
Christ, at the First Eucharist, takes wheat, the finest, and wine. He offers both to the Father but declares, this is my body, this is my blood of the New Covenant. The Old Testament sacrifice of bread, wine, along with a lamb signifies a sacred meal, a Todah or Thanksgiving Meal. The meal signifies the covenant. In the New Testament this same offering deepens the mystery. Through the Eucharistic Offering of wheat and wine, we not only participate in the offering of Christ, but we become part of the sacrifice. We offer the bread and wine in union with Christ, and we become the bread and wine. We become one with the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. Through our reception of the wheat and wine now the body and blood of Christ, we commune with God. Through this communion, we become one with Christ as Father to child and bride to the Bridegroom. As child and bride, we become the light of the Christ in this world for his glory dwells within us.
Filled in the Light of Christ, we become a beacon to others. We become the new Israel shining divine light to the darkness. This divine glory reveals God’s covenantal love. Isaiah explicitly explains how we are to display our covenantal love. We do what Christ does.
Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless;
clothe the naked when you see them, and do not turn your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed.
Is 58.7
We follow the dictate of the Law of the Lord. The dictate reveals the Father’s gift of his Son, a gift of divine love. Receiving this gift-love, Christians make of themselves a sincere gift to others, doing the works that the Father ordains. These works perfectly imitate the love of the Father and the Son.
The Second Vatican Council explains the works of Christ, as a gift of self. Self-donation is the essence of Covenantal Theology. The covenant is the union of humanity with divinity both giving of themselves to each other out of love to become one. Jesus becomes New Covenant exemplified by his self-donation.
When He prayed to the Father, "that all may be one. . . as we are one" (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.
Gaudium et Spes, # 24
When we gift ourselves, sacrifice ourselves for the good of the other, we do the work of the Father. We show mercy and receive mercy. Becoming a sincere gift, we are healed! Receiving the healing Light, Jesus commands us to let our light shine that, “They may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:16).