SALT OVERFLOW

James 5:1-6; Ps 49 Blessed are the poor in Spirit; the kingdom of heaven is theirs; Mark 9:41-50

"Everyone will be salted with fire.  Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor?  Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another."  JEsus in today's gospel.

Salt.

Here are a few words from Pope Benedict as Cardinal Ratzinger

"Salt interpreted as a symbol of wisdom, sapientia, always in association with sapere, with tasting: one must discover a taste for truth.  He who is wise is the one who taste things as they really are.  Salt was also used as  sacrificial offering in Old Testament: only by salt were such offerings made pleasing to the taste of the Godhead.

A man must be salted if he is to be pleasing to God and if he is to acquire a taste for God.  The salt of the passion is necessary for him if he is to walk the way of truth: communion of the cross heads to a taste for the truth."


PErhaps this is the salting by fire Jesus is speaking about in the gospel, the willingness to under take the passion, dying to self, which is in align with the rest of the gospel about plucking out eyes and cutting off limbs that lead to sin.

The passion of the believer is the dying to oneself, one's desires, one's affinity for sin.

Thus it is no longer we who live but christ who lives within us.  We have been crucified with Christ.

St. Paul refers to salt as grace.  Sin repels grace from our hearts thus avoiding sin and continually reaching out to God and invoking his covenant of salt (2 Chron 13:5) with us, then we become bearers of grace and thus bring his peace to the world.

To be salted with fire is to embrace the call of the passion in our life, dying to self, and allowing the fire of the SPirit to penetrate our lives and thus God's grace becomes abundant and overflowing.


Here let Matt Mahr help you with his song Overflow