Salt is good: but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall it be restored?
Read Chapter 14
Bede
AD 735
He had said above that the tower of virtue was not only to be begun, but also to be completed, and to this belongs the following, Salt is good. It is a good thing to season the secrets of the heart with the salt of spiritual wisdom, nay with the Apostles to become the salt of the earth. For salt in substance consists of water and air, having a slight mixture of earth, but it dries up the fluent nature of corrupt bodies so as to preserve them from decay. Fitly then He compares His disciples to salt, inasmuch as they are regenerated by water and the Spirit; and as living altogether spiritually and not according to the flesh, they after the manner of salt change the corrupt life of men who live on the earth, and by their own virtuous lives delight and season their followers.
As if He says, If a man who has once been enlightened by the seasoning of truth, falls back into apostasy, by what other teacher shall he be corrected, seeing that the sweetness of wisdom which he tasted he has castaw...
Salt is good, but if the salt have lost his savour, &c. Salt is good as long as it retains its peculiar properties. So also ye who are my Apostles, as long as ye preserve your spiritual powers, will be useful to the world to season it with the salt of gospel faith and wisdom. But if ye lose your savour, ye will be good for nothing but to be despised and trodden under feet of men, for there is no one to season or correct you. Bede. See also Comment. on S. Matthew 5:13, and S. Mark 9:50.
This parable applies not only to the Apostles, but in a measure to all Christians. For they ought, by the innocence of their lives and their good example, to season unbelievers who are, as it were, unsalted.
“Salt is good, but if the salt becomes tasteless, with what can it be seasoned? It is cast out,” he says. He continues, “Let there be salt in you,” that is, the divine words that bring salvation. If we despise these, we become tasteless, foolish and utterly useless. The congregation of the saints must throw out these things, by the gift of mercy and love to them from Christ, the Savior of us all. Commentary on Luke, Homily
But if the salt Man, after he has once been illumined with the light of faith, should he be so unfortunate as to fall into the sink of his former evil habits, what remedy is there remaining for him? He is, as our Saviour says, neither profitable for the land nor for the dunghill, but shall be cast out. (Luke xiv. 35.) (Ven. Bede)
But not only those who are gifted with the grace of teachers, but private individuals also He requires to become like salt, useful to those around them. But if he who is to be useful to others becomes reprobate, he cannot be profited, as it follows, But if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned?
But because His discourse was in parables and dark sayings, our Lord, in order to rouse His hearers that they might not receive indifferently what was said of the salt, adds, He that has ears to hear, let him hear, that is, as he has wisdom let him understand. For we must take the ears here as the perceptive power of the mind and capacity of understanding.
