Seventy Days To Prepare For Easter

Fifth Sunday in Course 2023

As a chemist, I find occasional use for those skills when reading the Sacred Scriptures. Today Jesus gives us a confusing chemical statement while He makes an important biblical statement. Neglect the chemistry for a moment. Everybody knows that sodium chloride is a compound that doesn’t lose its taste. But salt has an end, an objective. It either makes food taste a little different, tastier, or in great quantity, it helps to preserve meat that is kept at room temperature. So what you and I are supposed to do in our lives is be the salt of the earth. That means we help our world attain its end, its goal at the end of the world. Our world must be transformed, and we should be–must be–agents of that transformation. If we don’t make ourselves part of that change, we deserve to be thrown out.

As we look forward a few days toward Lent, we are given a great gift, what used to be called Septuagesima, or the “seventy” days. That’s forty days of Lent plus some preparation time. The way to be ready for the Lenten season is not to build floats for Mardi Gras. What we need to build is a personal support system for the three pillars of Lent: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Isaiah begins today’s readings by telling us the kinds of fasting that God wants. God gets upset, the prophet says, when those devoted to Him put on penitential garb and ashes on their heads but fail to reform their evil conduct. If fasting is an occasion for cheating your employees of wages or benefits or overtime, and puts you into such a bad mood that you get into arguments and come to blows with your neighbors, you don’t please anybody. Be just and then fast, taking the money you save on food and luxuries and giving clothing and shelter and food to the poor. When you do that you act like a lighthouse for ships caught in a storm, not only for those poor folk, but for everyone who sees your actions.

St. Paul learned all that after his humbling episode on the road to Damascus. He was a victim of his own pride and arrogance. But he rose up from his humiliation and became the greatest Christian preacher of his age, one of the two pillars (with Peter) of the Roman Church. Before his conversion, he was the BMOC, “big man on campus,” celebrated by his fellow Pharisees all over the Holy Land. After he met Christ, all changed. He willingly chose a mission to Jews and Gentiles that exposed him constantly to insults and whipping, stoning and shipwreck. He relied daily on his knowledge of the Truth, his spiritual gifts of healing and prophecy, his right living and right praise. These were more than enough in his weakness. Powerless as he was, his effectiveness as an apostle constantly improved, and persists to this day. Can we learn a lesson from this, in the need for humility and perseverance?