SALT GONE FLAT I love cooking. I never did before, but necessity is not just a mother of invention, but also a sister of improvisation. Having worked in a place where household helps are a rarity, if not prohibitive, I have learned to improvise in the kitchen, not without success I must say. I learned enough to say a thing or two about salt. First of all, I cannot think of salt going flat. Commercial salt, sea salt, iodized salt and the latest craze, flavored salt — they don’t go flat; they just get soggy. Mined salt culled from the earth does get flat after being soaked repeatedly. But the real enemy of commercial, purified and processed salt is humidity. Salt has both preservative and antiseptic properties. When salt goes flat, it does none of that. It becomes incapable of preserving food from spoilage and contagion. Salt gone soggy, however, can still do all that. No matter how water-logged, salt can still do its other important function — lend flavor to food and render it palatable. The Lord calls His disciples “salt of the earth.” He wants them [us] to act as an antiseptic to a world now adrift in a sea of evil influences. Like salt, we Christian disciples and believers are called to give a distinct Christian flavor to life and contribute in building up of the Kingdom here and now. But at the risk of sounding a little irreverent, I would like to focus today on preserving the salt from being overcome by sogginess and humidity. I am referring to some realities of our world: ordained ministers gradually being co-opted by the prevailing culture of consumerism; lay Catholics being swayed by the tyranny of mainstream media; so-called Catholic teachers succumbing to the forces of liberal ideologies that water down the tenets of the faith. Salt becomes inefficient and ineffective owing to sogginess, weighed down by the forces of moral relativism. This is just as bad, if not worse, than salt going flat — and the Christian message going pffft! Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:01:35 +0000