THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT II—SALT OF THE EARTH AND LIGHT OF THE WORLD February 8, 2026

Our Lord today continues the teaching begun last week in the “beatitudes” with a direct address to his audience: “YOU are the salt of the earth—YOU are the light of the world”. He does not mean that we should wish to draw attention to ourselves in order to be noticed. But nor does He mean that we should “hide our light under a bushel”, to quote another of His sayings. As Our Lord’s followers, we must be ready to do all in our power to make Him and His teaching known to those who do not know it, or have only a distorted idea of it.

     This is very demanding in a cynical world that believes that Christianity is a spent force. How hard it is to speak up for Christ’s teaching when it has been rejected by our society! It is a daunting prospect. But it is not one we can shun. We still have a duty to make Christ known. St John Henry Newman wrote a wonderful short meditation about this very task—how to think about it, how to approach it and how actually to do it:

     “Stay with me, [Lord], and then I shall begin to shine as Thou shinest: so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from Thee. None of it will be mine. No merit to me. It will be Thou who shinest through me upon others. O let me thus praise Thee, in the way which Thou dost love best, by shining on all those around me. Give light to them as well as to me; light them with me, through me. Teach me to show forth Thy praise, Thy truth, Thy will. Make me preach Thee without preaching—not by words, but by my example and by the catching force, the sympathetic influence, of what I do—by my visible resemblance to Thy saints, and the evident fulness of the love which my heart bears to Thee.”

     In other words, it is easier to do this than we might have thought, so long as we keep constantly in our minds that we are not making ourselves and our own ideas known, but we must make known to others Christ and His teaching. We must be Christ-bearers—images of Him, formed by the Sacraments which are His gift.                    

 ~  Fr. Paul Dobson.