Fr. Michael Williams

We know that salt has many uses. And you don’t need to much of it to make it effective. Small amounts of salt can season and preserve food; and it can be used to keep the roads clear of ice too! Salt has also been recommended over centuries for it’s cleansing qualities. I suppose that’s where we get the saying, ‘rubbing salt in the wound’.

So we see that salt can have a significant impact when it is utilized.

It’s probably with this in mind that Jesus tells His disciples, ‘You are the salt of the earth’. It’s because Jesus wants His disciples to significantly add a positive flavour to the world around them.

One of the most important areas where Jesus’ disciples have had a major impact over the centuries is in their care for the sick. Our Lord Himself reached out to the sick, so it’s hardly surprising that He wants His followers to as well. This is an area where we can be, ‘salt to the earth and light for the world’. The Chaplaincy team in a hospital is part of that. Bringing patients to Mass, taking them Holy Communion and praying with them, or just showing an interest in them by visiting them, is Christianity in action.

It’s also worth noting that many doctors, nurses, ancillary staff in hospitals are driven by their faith to serve God’s people with compassion, care and healing. In essence serving the sick is serving God.

On Friday, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, which is now designated as: ‘World Day of Prayer for the Sick’ is an opportunity for Catholics and others to reflect on Christian care for the sick. The Holy Father has said this is a ‘propitious occasion to reflect upon the mystery of suffering and above all to make our communities and civil society more sensitive to our sick brothers and sisters’. This sensitivity that we need is the sensitivity of Christ Himself, whose disposition to the sick and suffering is second to none.

Pope Benedict goes on to say that, ‘the true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through “com-passion” is a cruel and inhuman society’ (Encyclical letter [Spe salvi,]{.underline} n. 38).

For ourselves I can think of no better prayer to try and reflect Christ’s call to be, ‘salt to the earth and light for the world’, than the Grail Prayer, especially with regard to the sick in our hospitals, our families, our neighborhoods. This is that prayer please repeat after me:

Lord Jesus, I give you my hands to do your work.
                   I give you my feet to go your way.
                   I give you my eyes to see as you do.
                   I give you my tongue to speak your words.
                   I give you my mind that you may think in me.
                   I give you my spirit that you may pray in me.

Above all, I give you my heart that you may love in me your Father and all your creation. I give you my whole self that you may grow in me, so that it is you,
Lord Jesus, who live and work and pray in me.’

If we put that prayer into action daily then we will always remain the salt to the earth that Jesus expects us to be and not become the ‘tasteless’ salt that is of no use; we will be a light for those in the darkness of illness and suffering.