Dear Friends in Christ,
‘Oh, they are salt of the earth,’ we often say when we are referring to a person who is straightforward, honest and without guile. Another common saying in the same vein is ‘what you see is what you get’. In today’s reading, Jesus’ description of his disciples as ‘the salt of the earth’ would have struck a chord and meant something very specific to his listeners.
In Jesus’ day salt was a valuable commodity. In order to preserve food from decay in the heat salt was applied as a preservative. It also served to enhance flavour of the food. The ancient tradition of salting the sacrificial offerings denoted a purifying function. It was perhaps for this reason that new-born babies were rubbed with salt to denote purification of the addition to God’s people and as a reminder of the covenant.
Those who heard Jesus speak would have understood the meaning and tradition behind the idea of being ‘salt of the earth’. In the same way as salt prevents decay and corruption, so the witness of Spirit-led Christians protects society from decay and corruption. It also adds much needed flavour to society. And, drawing on the idea that too much salt in our food can make us thirsty. St. Augustine once wrote: ‘O Heavenly Father, you have put salt into our mouths that we may thirst for you.’ The work of the Holy Spirit id to create within us a thirst for the things of God: for union with God, communion with him and for grace to live a life which is holy and pleasing to him. When Jesus said ‘I thirst’ from the cross, his thirst wasn’t just physical, it was spiritual – God thirsts that we come into his presence as we long to come into him.
Jesus also calls us to be ‘the light of the world’. In this way we are to be like our Mater, for in John 8:12 Jesus describes himself as ‘the light of the world’. We are to be countercultural, signs of contradiction, heralds of the gospel of life in the world which, in so many respects, has lost its way.
The great feast of the Epiphany marks the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the world. The Magi, the three kings or wise men whom tradition has named Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, come to worship and adore, thus representing the acceptance of the ‘Good News’ by the pagan nations.
On this most holy feast-day we can re-cover and re-discover a sense of our own mission to make Christ known, not only to the nations but to those we live and work among. If we ask him, the Holy Spirit will imbue us with a new confidence to witness to Christ. Whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is beautiful and whatever is true in other cultures and natures is of Christ and in Christ. The message of Christ won over the Magi and it will win over pagan nations and those who resist the gospel – not by force or power but by the grace of the Holy Spirit, who reveals and convinces that there is only one King for all the nations, and that is Christ Jesus our Lord. 
During this holy season of Advent, we turn to the great witnesses of faith: to St. John the Baptist, to Abraham, our father in faith, who believed against hope, to Mary our Mother who often walked her pilgrimage in the night of faith, and many others. 
The season of Advent is a wonderful, God given opportunity to discover the gift of repentance and the grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. When was your last confession? Some people go more regularly than others. The Church invites us to make a sacramental confession at least once a year, but many have not known the grace of this sacrament for a considerable number of years. To anyone in this situation God’s hand of mercy and compassion is extended. Because our confession of sin is mediated through the priest in the confessional it does require special grace and some courage to open up our lives in this way. It is important to understand, however, that we are not confessing to the priest: we are laying down our burden before God. If a priest has received faculties to hear confessions (and this is not automatically granted by the bishop) we hope and pray that ne has the necessary pastoral wisdom and maturity to facilitate this sacrament so that the penitent comes to know in a deeply personal way the mercy, forgiveness and compassion of God. 
The Advent season has its roots in the pagan festival of the winter solstice. The word ‘solstice’ is derived from the Latin word 
people of a philosophical bent have questioned the value of prayer, and especially intercessory prayer. It is said, for example, that the German poet Goethe never prayed because he argued that the world was set on its course anyway. Of course, god knows what we are going to ask him in advance of our asking. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God ‘is the Lord of the universe, whose order he established, and which remains wholly subject to him and at this disposal. He is mater of history, governing hearts and events in keeping with his will….’ (para 269). God did not create the world and then leave it to its own devices! He has assured us through the Scriptures that he will change events as a result of our prayers. The world is not just a machine ticking over like a watch. It is more a unity, directed by an infinite mind which we call God. So, we must keep praying, as Paul says, ‘at all times’, that is when things are good and when things are bad. 
Of course, prayer can be frustrating. Sometimes our prayers never seem to be answered. But God may be leading us to the virtue of perseverance, in Greek 
Our understanding of kingship or queenship is very much rooted in the idea of privilege and of ruling our subjects. Jesus, however, bore witness to an altogether different kind of kingship. He is the Servant King. He is the King of the kingdom of love, service and sacrifice. We are his subjects – we swear a loyalty to our King. What is wonderful about the kingdom is that rather than us just serving the King, the King also serves his people. Jesus turned upside down our understanding of what it means to be great, what it means to be regal. We are called to witness to the fruits, gifts and values not of the kingdom of this world but of the kingdom of Christ.
Today it is the Sadducees who confront the Lord. The Sadducees were an elite aristocratic group – a kind of club of socially aspirational and religiously conservative men. They rejected most of the Old Testament, accepting only the Pentateuch (the first five books) as divinely inspired. Unlike the Pharisees, they did not believe in the afterlife, the spirit world or the resurrection of the body.
Typically, the Lord refuses to answer the questions head on. He rather points to the fact that marriage is a human institution which comes to an end with death, ‘till death do us part’. That is not to say that those who are married are not reunited after death – surely they are – but they are united in a different way and in a different relationship before God. Beyond the confines of this world there is no need for marriage because both man and wife are joined together in their love and worship of God – in the same was as the angels are. 
As sinners go, Zacchaeus was a ‘big fish’ or perhaps it would be better to say a ‘big shark’. As a chief tax collector, he was responsible for other tax collectors and no doubt very experienced in the dark art of exploiting and cheating others. There was a real sense of venom and hatred for these traitors – they were seen as the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low. Ironically, the name Zacchaeus means ‘innocent’ or ‘pure’, but there was nothing pure and innocent about him. His wealth was the fruit of a corrupt tax system in which the Jewish tax collectors secured their own piece of the pie by charging a further levy and skimming off for themselves. They were literally getting wealthy on the back of others.