Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve
The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 8, 2026
We are salt. We are light. Our human gift is to enhance flavor, to burn brightly. Jesus does not say, “you have salt and light”. He does not say, “you are salt ‘if’”. He does not say, “you are light ‘if’”. He lists no condition, no cost, no possible revocation. This is a proclamation from the one who created us. Dare we believe the announcement Jesus makes that inherent in every human is the divine zest that awakens taste, the holy fire that warms and reveals? The implications are staggering.
What follows this announcement are warnings. You are salt - but don’t lose your saltiness. You are light - but don’t hide the light you are. The immediate truth to be spoken after proclaiming who we are is the danger of polluting or hiding who we are.
God creates us out of love to reflect divine life. Christ warns us out of love so that we would preserve and live what we are. Notice the nature of the relationship. The Christian life is a dance between delight and danger, gift and warning, grace and responsibility. Only God can create, and God has. And in that very creation God risks giving us to use as we decide a glory and honor, we have neither earned nor deserved in ourselves. In return, we are invited to reflect back the dignity of being human, to make every moment the sacrifice of gratitude and self-offering.
We are salt and light purely by God’s grace. Acting like it is on us. Christ can give us our essence, make us salt and light. He cannot force our will. He cannot make us live who we are. He can invite, admonish, even warn us about our choice, but he cannot make it for us. He points to the dangers of choosing pollution and hiding so that we might be alert to what is at stake and take our responsibility as seriously as he does.
What if we say yes to who we really are? We actualize salt and light by prophetic words and deeds. God has made us live in a generous, respectful community with one another as brothers and sisters. And as a new humanity the barriers and dividing walls have come down and we are one. Yet enmity and violence persist. We encounter within us and around us systems and patterns that normalize harm, prejudice, and bigotry. Salt and light make us aware of the harm we do and the harm done in our names. Salt and light in us enlighten us to recognize evil and injustice and the temptation to compliantly conform to their ways. And by being salt and light, we can say, “no, I will not comply”. Being salt is waking up, looking around, paying attention to reality - not the party line, not propaganda, but what is actually true. Light is exposing, illuminating, and revealing what is hidden and unnamed.
Now we see the importance of the warnings. This proclamation of Jesus about who we are sets us in this cosmic wrestling against evil. This identity will cost us something. No wonder we rationalize a little sand in our salt, just a small basket over our light. But our salt is made salty, our lights meant to shine bright, exposed. Bland darkness is lifeless. Zesty light is laying down my life. Those are the choices - I offer myself to Christ as I decide to wake up and tell the truth or I play it safe, exist but not really live.
The warnings are for us because the pressure of our internal fear and external danger are powerful enough to get us to reject our identity. Around us what scripture calls principalities and powers, spiritual evil, systemic injustice, violence and prejudice, are the manifestations of the rejection of salt and light. After a group, an ideology, a movement has polluted its salt and hidden its light, the very notion of what it means to be human gets gnarled into an ugly thing. Evil fills the vacuum where the salt and light were meant to be. And this vacuum recoils from the thing it once was and rejected. The evil powers of this world cannot stand the presence of salt and light. These powers make friends with blandness and worship darkness and call it holy. It rules with the fear that lives in it. It says, “conform, and we’ll let you live.”
Abbot Anthony, who lived from 251-356 said, ‘A time is coming when people will go mad, and when they meet someone who is not mad, they will turn to him and say, “You are out of your mind,” just because he is not like them.’
Jesus calls those who follow him to receive the identity and capacity to resist and subvert the powers of evil so that the life of the kingdom of heaven will be lived in us and known in all the world. Salt and light are dangerous. They are noncompliant, unyielding, and unbowed in the face of the flat darkness that would deaden our souls. So do not comply. Do not complacently adjust to anything inhuman. Be intolerable to injustice. Be unavailable for lies. Be uninterested in the call to conform to the ways of this world at the expense of your soul. Some around you may choose to be bland. You are seasoning. Be seasoning instead. Some around you may choose to stay in the darkness. You are light. Shine your light. This is scary. Fear means we are alive; we want to keep living, but fear does not get to decide what makes us human. We are salt. We are light. Go and season life. Go and shine fire. Amen.
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