CAC core faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher speaks of how we can become agents of transformation and healing by giving of ourselves like salt and light:
We human beings are forgetful. We need reminders of important things, including the gospel that feeds the soul and illuminates the divine loving self within. Mindful of the world’s beauty and violence, let’s steep for a moment in these encouraging and inspiring words:
You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has become insipid, how will it be made salt again? It’s no longer good for anything then, except being thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill can’t be hidden and people don’t hide an oil lamp under a two-gallon basket. They put it on a lampstand where it gives light for everybody in the house. Give light for other people. Live so they see your compassionate acts and praise your divine Father (Matthew 5:13–16).
We all need the nourishment of the gospel’s good news so that a dire news overload of despotism, division, and moral outrage doesn’t glut and dictate our inner lives and our outer kind actions. In our screen-heavy days, it’s so easy to forget how potent salt and light are. So let’s remember together.
Salt ultimately comes from the ocean by the action of light. So, in this Gospel, Jesus is saying poetically, you all are, in essence, the ocean, one made by and of love. May we remember our shared, stable, divine center and that, when by deep listening, we honor the sacred worth of our own and of another’s life, our empathy dissolves into transformative compassion. Salt has power to disinfect wounds. May we remember that accepting ourselves and each other—both—as imperfect and “unshakably good,” as Father Greg Boyle reminds, is strong medicine that creates a community of cherished belonging. Small kind acts are never small. Salt can also melt snow and ice from roads and walkways, making clear passage. May we remember our kind divine parent, and may this awareness melt the iciness of perfectionism, the illusion of separation and anxiety, steadying our steps together.
Obviously salt and light look different on the surface, but they both fulfill their powerful natures by giving away or losing themselves. “You are salt and light” is a counter-cultural revolutionary statement, rich with psychological and embodied, empowering wisdom. May we remember that like the wise self-emptying of kenosis, being salt and light reminds us that no matter how broken or broken-hearted by the world’s suffering, we are love and are most ourselves when giving ourselves away, embracing grief’s salty tears.
May we remember we are God’s children. As Howard Thurman writes: “[Whoever] knows this is able to transcend the vicissitudes of life, however terrifying and look out on the world with quiet eyes.” [1]
May you and I see the world and everyone in it with quiet eyes and may we act in the world with kind hearts, being salt and light. Amen.
References:
[1] Howard Thurman, Deep River; and The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death (Friends United Press, 1975), 12.
Adapted from Carmen Acevedo Butcher, 2025 Daily Meditations Theme: Being Salt and Light, Center for Action and Contemplation, video, 11:41.
Image credit and inspiration: Zach Lucero, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like this flame ignites another, contemplative action spreads quietly yet powerfully, igniting hearts to brighten the world with love.
Story from Our Community:
We need to remember that we are salt and light. I try my best to continue on the journey with hope, yet I’m feeling the weight of the world affecting my movement. We need each other to “be salt and light” and to carry the heavy burden together. It’s the only way we can continue on the journey of Love, and it’s also what can blaze a trail towards being a people of salt and light. A trail of ever greater fear only leads us further from our true selves, away from remembering who we are.
—Jason O.
