Homily Notes Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

All through history salt has been a very important commodity. We know it is used for a variety of purposes. We season our food with it. Before refrigeration salting things was one of the only ways to preserved food. If Jesus would have lived in Central Illinois in the winter time he probably would not have said that tasteless salt is no good. We can just throw it out to be trampled underfoot. Here, salt is valuable even when we toss it on the sidewalk so we don’t slip and fall.

We know that once something is salted you can’t take the salt out of it. Removing salt from water, for instance, is a very expensive proposition. People have tried to do that with ocean water in arid lands, but it has never worked. Economically it does not make sense.

I once lived with several immigrants from the orient. I would watch them cook. And it was very interesting, because they used an abundance of salt. The men I lived with would cook with salt in one hand. In the other they would have sugar. If they felt their food was too salty they would throw in some sugar. On the other hand, if the food was too sweet they would throw in salt. Back and forth they went, but one thing they could never do is take the salt out. All they could do was mask the taste. Jesus said that Christians were the salt of the world. Maybe he was saying that we Christians will never go away? We will be in the world as long as there is a world.

I got a sense of what Jesus was talking about when I went to a film recently that I really wanted to see, yet did not want to see at the same time. The film is called Silence. The movie is about the suppression of Christianity in 17th century Japan. At that time, the Jesuits had been actively spreading Christianity in Japan, but the Japanese government wanted to root out this Western religion.

As the movie begins a rumor reaches Portugal that a Jesuit named Fr. Ferreira had committed the sin of apostasy in Japan. He had denied his faith. The Jesuits are shocked. Two young Jesuits volunteer to go to find Fr. Ferreira to rescue him. Or at least bring him back to the faith. One of young Jesuits is named Fr. Rodrigues. He is idealist. He is committed. He finds a man to guide him into Japan. When he lands in Japan there have not been any active priests for years. The native Christians have been brutally persecuted. Fr. Rodrigues is surprised that the natives take him in. The Japanese Christians hide him and his companion. He says Mass for them. He celebrates reconciliation with the Catholics he finds. Finally, he is captured.

Fr. Rodrigues is isolated. He is made to watch as the people he has come to know tortured. Some are burned to death. Others Christians are drowned in front of him. Still others are crucified. One man is decapitated before him. He is asked before each execution if he will deny his faith. The people executed will not commit apostasy as long as he doesn’t. Finally, he meets up with Fr. Ferreira who urges him to renounce his faith to save the lives of the innocent people who are being put to death. The Japanese inquisitor keeps telling Rodrigues that Christianity will never take root in Japanese soil. Fr. Rodrigues is left with a choice. We get the impression that he would give his own life, but he does not want others to die protecting him. He denies the faith, but does he really? That is the question.

The good news of the film is that the faith continues to exist in Japan. Catholics are in that country today. Christians were the salt they were supposed to be. So it has been throughout the world. wherever Christianity has been introduced it has grown to the frustration of those who have sought to repress it.

Tertullian, an early Christian author, once wrote to those who opposed his faith, “No cruelty of yours, though each were to exceed the last in its exquisite refinement, profits you in the least; but forms rather an attraction to our sect. We spring up in greater numbers as often as we are mown down by you; the flood of the Christians is a source of new life.”

As we witness the growth of atheism in our society we may despair. We may think that Christianity is dead, but it grows throughout the world. When it struggles in one place it prospers in another. Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth.” He was confident in the faith of his followers. He believes in us. We can trust in him, at all times, in every circumstance.

Please remember this is a rough draft, grammar may not be perfect.