Salt of the earth
“You are the salt of the earth”, the Saviour says, so showing them the necessity of all those precepts he has just proclaimed. “My word,” he says to them, “will not only apply to your own lives but has been entrusted to you for the whole world. I am not sending you out to two towns, nor to ten, nor twenty, nor even to a single people as was the case of prophets in former times. But I am sending you out to the earth, the sea, the whole creation (Mk 16:15), wherever evil is rampant.
Indeed, by saying to them: “You are the salt of the earth”, he showed them that all human nature is saltless, corrupted by sin. Through their ministry the Holy Spirit's grace will regenerate and preserve the world. Hence he teaches them the virtues of the beatitudes: those that are most necessary and efficacious in anyone responsible for a multitude. Someone who is gentle, modest and merciful and does not just shut inside himself the good deeds he carries out in his mind but takes care that those lovely springs should also stream out for the good of others. Anyone who has a pure heart, who is a peacemaker, who suffers persecution for the truth is a person who consecrates his life for the good of others.
St. Philip Neri