Salt That Has Lost Its Savor

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Salt without savor is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men” (Matt. 5:13).

Our Lord has told His disciples that they are “the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:13). They do to the world exactly what salt does to food, keeping it from going bad and making it agreeable to the palate.

But salt can sometimes lose its savor or in itself deteriorate, and then it becomes useless. This kind of change is, after sin, the saddest thing that can befall a Christian, the point of whose existence has been to give light to many, whereas now, in fact, they have become darkness.

Far from being able to point out the people he comes in touch with in the right direction, that person now becomes disoriented and aimless himself. Having been placed on earth to give strength to others, he has nothing left to communicate now but weakness.

Lukewarmness is a disease of the soul that affects both the intellect and the will, and leaves the Christian devoid of the strength to carry out apostolate, at the same time filling him with a deep feeling of sadness and impoverishment.

The sickness starts with a weakening of the will, brought about by means of repeated faults and culpable omissions, of frequently doing wrong, and possibly even worse, failing to do what is right.

The Christian no longer sees Christ clearly on the horizon of his life, because he's been consistently careless regarding the little details that are a proof of love.

He now discovers that Christ now seems far removed from him. His interior life undergoes a profound change; it no longer has Our Lord as its focal point.

The person who is lukewarm finds that their practices of piety have become empty of content; he no longer puts his heart and soul into them. He goes through the motions, performing them out of routine or habit, no longer out of love.

One spiritual writer says: In this state, a man loses all spontaneity and joy—recognizable characteristics of a soul in love—in responding to anything that has a reference to God.

A lukewarm Christian is somehow ‘inside out’; his is a soul that has grown weary in its endeavor to improve. Christ has faded from the horizon of his life.

The soul decries God, if he sees Him at all, describes Him as a remote and distant figure, hazy and indistinct, with ill-defined features, and probably indifferent to Him. No longer does he perform positive acts of generosity as he formerly did. He is now prepared to settle for much less (cf. Francis Fernández, Lukewarmness).

St. Thomas Aquinas cites as a feature of this state “a kind of sadness, whereby a man becomes sluggish in spiritual exercises because they weary the body” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part I, Question 63).

All norms of piety and devotion become a burden for us, a burden we find increasingly hard to bear, instead of being a powerful center of energy, driving us forward and helping us to overcome any difficulties we may encounter.

There are many Christians who have sunk into lukewarmness. There is, in our time, a great deal of savorless salt about.

We can consider in our prayer today whether we are going forward with the firmness and confidence that Our Lord asks of us, whether we regard our conversation with Him as the treasure which enables our interior life to intensify and keep growing, and whether we properly nourish our love.

We can consider whether, when we become aware of our weakness and our lack of correspondence with grace, we promptly make acts of contrition to close the breach the enemy has made, and is attempting to widen in our defenses.

We mustn't confuse the state of the lukewarm soul with the sense of dryness sometimes experienced when we perform our acts of piety, a sensation produced on occasions or for long periods by tiredness, or illness, or by the temporary loss of physiological keenness and enthusiasm.

In such cases, in spite of the feeling of dryness, our will is firmly set on all that is good. Our soul knows that it is traveling directly towards Christ, even though it is at this moment passing over a stony waste where the going is hard, and we can't find a single well or even a spring of cool water.

But our soul knows where its destination lies and goes straight towards it in spite of our weariness and thirst and the unfriendly terrain we have to tread.

In the state of what's called aridity, even though the soul has no feeling and it seems difficult to pray, to carry on any real conversation with God, true devotion nevertheless remains.

St. Thomas Aquinas has defined this type of devotion as the “will to give oneself readily to things concerning the [service] of God” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part II-II, Question 82).

This “readiness” grows weak if the will falls into a state of lukewarmness.

“I have this against you,” says Our Lord in the Book of Revelation, “that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev. 2:4)—that you have weakened, that you no longer love me as you did formerly.

A person who is determined to keep up their prayer, even in times of aridity, when all feeling is absent, is perhaps like the person who draws water from a well, bucket by bucket, one aspiration after another, an act of sorrow. It's hard work and demands effort, but he does draw out water.

On the other hand, in a state of lukewarmness, our imagination strays and runs wild. We're no longer firmly determined to dispel voluntary distractions and in practice, abandon prayer with the excuse that we're getting no results from it.

Genuine conversation with God, on the other hand, even if God allows it to be arid, is always fruitful, whatever the circumstances, as long as we have rectitude of intention and are firmly intent on being close to God.

We can remind ourselves, here and now, in the presence of God, that true piety is not a matter of feelings, although sensitive affections are good and they can be a great help in our prayer and in the whole of our interior life, because they're an important part of human nature as it was created by God.

But our feelings can be mistaken. You can feel very well, and you could have a big cancer inside you. You might feel very sick, and you might be as healthy as a horse. Feelings can be misleading. Christ's feelings on the Cross cannot have been wonderful, with three big nails going through Him.

And so, our affections should not occupy a disproportionately important place in our life of piety. They're not the main part of our relationship with God.

St. Josemaría used to say that the day you're doing your prayer and you feel awful, you feel you're getting nothing, you feel it's a waste of time—he said, “Persevere in that prayer, because that might be the best prayer that you ever did, because that prayer is all done for God; there are no human compensations.

If our prayer and our life of piety are full of compensations, it could be that we're looking for the compensations, not necessarily seeking Him.

Feelings help, but achieve no more than this assistance, because the essence of piety does not consist in feelings, but in the will’s being determined to serve God, quite independently of any state of mind—which is always so changeable—or of any other circumstances.

In matters of piety, we need to take care not to let ourselves be guided by feelings, but rather by our intellect, enlightened and helped, as we pray it will be, by faith.

One writer said, “To allow oneself to be guided by feelings would be like handing over the management of one's house to a servant, while you as its real owner abdicate responsibility for it. It's not the feelings that are bad, but rather the degree of importance that we attribute to them” (Joseph Tissot, The Interior Life).

Lukewarmness is sterile. Salt without savor “is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men” (Matt. 5:13).

On the other hand, aridity can be the positive sign that God wants to purify a particular soul.

In our apostolic life, there might be times when we're asked to do things that don't give us pleasant feelings. We might be asked to give a talk. We might be asked to go and find material means to set up some apostolic work. We might be asked to research a certain topic for some apostolic purpose. And we might find all of those things particularly distasteful.

Our feelings might not be there, but if we approach those tasks with a supernatural outlook and see that as the will of God for us, great fruits may result.

We need to have interior life. As human beings, we can be a cause of happiness or sadness, of light or darkness. We can be the source of peace or of anxiety, either the leaven that enhances or a dead weight that hinders the progress of others.

Our passage over this earth can never be a matter of indifference as far as others are concerned. We help others to find Christ or we separate them from Him. We enrich others or we impoverish them.

And we come across so many of these others—friends, workmates, members of our family, neighbors—who seem to go after material goods as though they hungered for them, material goods that only serve to lure them away from the true good who is Jesus Christ.

They can journey through life like people who are lost. If the guide of the blind is not to become blind himself (cf. Matt. 15:14), it's not enough for him to know the way from hearsay, or from coming across mere references to it.

If we are to help the people around us, it's not enough for us to have a vague and superficial knowledge of the way. We need to walk along it ourselves and to have first-hand knowledge of the obstacles that lie in our path and which need to be surmounted.

We need to have interior life, to enter daily into personal conversation with Jesus. We need to know His doctrine ever more deeply; to struggle with still more determination to overcome our own defects. The apostolate is the result of a great love for Christ.

The first Christians were the true salt of the earth, and they preserved people and institutions—the whole of society—from corruption.

What can it be that has happened in so many nations? Why is it that Christians should now be giving the sad impression that they're unable to slow down and halt the wave of corruption that's bursting in on the family, on schools, and on institutions?

The faith is still the same. And Christ lives among us now just as He did previously. His power is still infinite, divine.

One writer says, “Only the lukewarmness of so many thousands, indeed millions, of Christians, explains how we can offer to the world a spectacle of a Christianity that allows all kinds of heresies and stupidities to be propounded within itself.

“Lukewarmness destroys the strength and endurance of the faith and is the soulmate, in both a personal and a collective way, of compromise and of a spirit of comfort-seeking” (Pedro Rodríguez, Faith and Life of Faith).

It's difficult to explain many of the things that happen nowadays at a personal and public level, if we don't bear in mind that so many people who should be awake, watchful, and attentive have allowed their faith to fall asleep.

Love has been snuffed out in so very many hearts. In many spheres, the ‘normal Christian’ now generally appears as someone who is lukewarm and mediocre.

Among the first Christians, the ‘normal Christian’ meant someone who lived the heroism of each day and, when the occasion presented itself, accepted martyrdom itself. It could and did mean very often the surrender of one's very life in defense of the faith.

When love grows cold and faith falls asleep, the salt loses its savor and is no longer good for anything. It's just something to throw away. What a pity if a Christian were to become as useless as this.

Lukewarmness is often the cause of apostolic ineffectiveness, because if we are in its grip, the little we do becomes a task devoid of human or supernatural attractiveness, and bereft of a spirit of sacrifice.

Faith that appears moribund and radiates little love and is unable to win anyone over or find the right words with which to attract others to a deep and intimate relationship with Christ.

We can ask Our Lord for the strength to react. We will be the salt of the earth if we keep up our daily conversation with God, if we go with ever greater faith and love to receive the Blessed Eucharist.

Love was, and is, the moving force of the life of the saints. It's the whole reason for being of every life dedicated to God.

Love gives us wings with which to soar over any personal barriers to our advancement, or any obstacles presented to us by our surroundings. Love makes us unyielding when confronted by setbacks.

Lukewarmness, on the other hand, gives up at the slightest difficulty—a letter we need to write, a phone call we should make, a visit or a conversation that we need to have, or the lack of some material means. It makes mountains out of molehills.

On the other hand, love for God makes a molehill out of a mountain. It transforms the soul, gives it new lights, and opens up new horizons for it. It makes the soul capable of achieving its highest desires and gives it capacities it had never as much as dreamed of possessing.

Love doesn't make a fuss about the effort involved and fills the soul with happiness as it surveys the results of its efforts.

In the parable of the prodigal son, we're also told about the elder son. “He was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what this meant.

“The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound’” (Luke 15:25-27).

St. Augustine comments: “But he was angry and refused to go in. Are you not moved by the celebration in the father's house? The banquet with the fatted calf, has this not given you pause? No one will exclude you from the banquet. It all is for nothing, however. The elder son becomes furious and will not go in” (St. Augustine, Sermon 11).

In his fit of pique, he reveals his deepest motivation: “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours comes, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf” (Luke 15:28-30).

The father in the parable is God. He always has His arms outstretched, being full of mercy. The younger son is the image of the sinner who converts to God.

And the elder son? He is the worker who has labored in the fields, but without joy. He has served because he had to serve. Over the course of time, his heart has grown cold. His sense of charity has evaporated. His brother has become “this son of yours.”

He is like salt which has lost its savor. There is a striking contrast between the magnanimity of the father and the meanness of the elder son.

Serving God and enjoying His friendship should be a continual feast. The Second Vatican Council in Lumen gentium said, “To serve is to reign” (Vatican II, Lumen gentium, Point 36, November 21, 1964).

The elder son represents those who forget that serving God is a tremendous honor. In the act of service is to be found a good measure of the compensation.

“His father says to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours’ (Luke 15: 31). Therefore, all honor and glory are ours if we are really of God” (St. Augustine, Sermon 11).

God Himself will give us of His riches. What more can we ask for?

“Each one of us must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion” says St. Paul, “for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7).

There are always many reasons for us to celebrate if we truly live in the presence of God. We have a special opportunity to be magnanimous in our dealings with those closest to us.

St. Teresa of Lisieux said, “How sweet a joy it is to think that God is just. In other words, He makes allowances for our weaknesses and understands perfectly the frailty of our humanity.

“So what have I to be afraid of? If God, who is perfectly just, shows such mercy in forgiving the prodigal son, must He not also be just to me ‘who am always with Him’ (Luke 15:31)?” (Thérèse of Lisieux, Autobiography of a Soul).

As we finish our prayer, we can turn with confidence to Our Lady, the perfect model of loving correspondence to the Christian vocation.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that in Mary we find the model of all virtues (cf. Catechism, Point 829; Vatican II, Lumen gentium, Point 65, November 21, 1964).

Mary, may you remove effectively from our soul any shadow of lukewarmness. May you guide the angels to make us diligent in God's service, so that we might always be in our family, in our workplace, in society, the salt that God has planned us to be.

I thank you my God for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, St Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MML