Fr. Alfonse Blog Mt 5:13-16 That Salty Feelin'

Tuesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

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.”

While I was a seminarian in Rome, I would often help out at various Catholic schools.  I did a variety of things.  I taught religion, gave talks, set up for Masses and helped organize confession times.  One day, I was invited by the parent’s of a child to come to a meeting they were having with the principal of a certain Catholic school.  I went, voluntarily, wondering why I was invited.  To my surprise, the meeting was all about me.  It wasn’t a good meeting.  The parent who invited me started screaming at me and saying all these nasty things about me.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  They started off by directing their comments to the principal:  “Why did you invite this man to our school?  It used to be so nice without him!”  The principal tried to calm them down and told them the truth, “Well, he’s been a great help.  He given talks to the kids…We never used to have that.”  “Exactly!” the mom responded, “And that’s why we picked this school!”    

Well, the meeting didn’t go so well for me.  But at least the truth came out.  She was upset at me because her son was beginning to think that maybe he had a priestly vocation.  The principal thanked me for all my work, but he was running a small school and it was important to him that all his parents were “happy”.  I told him I understood…but I really didn’t. 

A few years ago, while I was helping at a certain parish, I received many compliments for my homilies.  But one day, I received a letter from someone I didn’t know that said they were “deeply offended” by what I had said with regards to marriage.  I won’t go into any of the details here, but suffice it to say, they made it clear that my homilies were not as good as those of the previous pastor.  They wrote something to the affect:  “Father _____ used to knock it out of the ball park every time he said a homily.”  Wishing to learn from the very best, I wrote a short response begging them to explain to me how Father preached on the sanctity of marriage and the Christian definition of marriage.  Silence.

 Again, not too long after, while greeting parishioners after Mass, someone waited till the very end of the line to speak to me for a brief moment.  It was an elderly woman.  She took my hand and looked me in the eyes and told me, “The Holy Spirit at this moment is telling me that I need to share with you this important message.  Please, please, please…do not preach your homily again.”    I looked her in the eyes and said to her, “Why didn’t He tell me Himself?  And why didn’t He tell me as I was preparing my homily and asking Him to open my heart and mind to Him?”  She began to cry.  Her husband grabbed her hand and gave me the ugliest look I have ever received.  I lost. 

I can honestly say that not a single person has ever changed my point of view with regards to how I preach and what I preach about.  But I will say:  when the day arrives that people stop complaining about my homilies (not for style, but for content), then I will be worried.   I will be worried that I’ve become salt that has lost all its flavor; that is, that I’ve become totally irrelevant to the Gospel and useless to God.

We cannot simply be Christian in name.  We must be Christian in words and in deeds.  Remember:  The Word became flesh and lived (walked and talked) among us.  This is what it means to be a Christian.  It means to be another Christ.  It means to carry all the good and bad (the Cross) that goes everywhere with Him.

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