You are the salt of the earth. // Matthew 5:13

My roommate has recently become mildly obsessed with Samin Nosrat’s book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and its corresponding Netflix series about the four essential elements of any good meal. She has since been peppering me (pun 100 percent intended) with more than I knew that I needed to know about salt. For instance:

“Did you know,” she asks me one night as she’s preheating a skillet, “that when you add salt to meat before you cook it, it flavors it from within?”

I did not know this, but as I take another bite of my own meal and determine it a bit too bland, I admit my cooking could have benefited from this fact. I allow myself a few moments to chew over this new knowledge (okay, okay, I’ll stop with the puns), and I find myself thinking of today’s Gospel. 

Jesus tells us, “You are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13). And our mission as His disciples, nourished by the grace of a rich sacramental life, is to flavor this world from within: within our homes, within our communities, within our parishes, within our careers, within a world that is often hostile to the Church. We need only look to the work of this day to determine where we are called to be seasoning. And when we show up wholeheartedly in those areas—with great faith, hope, and love—we can trust that the Lord is using us to bring the world to fullness of flavor in faith.

Sister, take a few moments to consider the communities to which you belong, and pray about how the Lord might be asking you today to flavor them from within, through your witness to the Gospel.