A Reprint Deep in the recesses of the home, a Rabbi stands and observes the process of koshering meat. He is but one link in a chain of watchful, careful observance- from the time the animal is innocently chewing its cud in the gentle, high grass, to the time of leading by the rope to the place of slaughter, to the time now when the meat is having its blood drawn out to clean and purify the flesh. The Rabbi watches intently as the pearly-white, tiny pebbles of sea salt are rubbed into the surface of the meat, and the butchered animal is slowly transformed into clean nutrition for the community. The salt begins its important work, pulling the blood into itself and bleaching it so that it is changed in its essence. The salt leaves the meat different than it was, makes it able to be used not only to nourish the bodies of the family, but to nourish the liturgy of faith, to incarnate the metaphysical truths and the remembrance of a saving God. The shadows fall over the Rabbi’s face as he smiles at the family leaned over in attention at the process, and turns to step out into the bronze light of late afternoon.
As the Rabbi shields his eyes from the diffused light of sunset, he picks his way among the crowds of the market, making for the cool peace of his own home. He sees salt again, the piles in the bins making him feel suddenly thirsty; salt seems to be pressing in on his consciousness. He gives into its demands, and starts ruminating: salt, that spice that is not a spice, alone a mineral in the spice markets, its very color demanding attention, its very properties of bleaching and helping to keep the heart beating, drawing other substances into itself and changing them forever; its association with the primordial environment of the sea; its special and essential job of preservation. Thinking of preservation, other images crowd into his mind: the furtive look back of the wife of Lot and the resulting woman-pillar. What a beauty of horror she must have looked, her longing expression and the clutching hands, the delicately flared nostrils in the purity of white; the weeping of her daughters surrounding her form like the whispering of the angels; and the whitened flats near the sea that were once Sodom and Gomorrah, nephillim-sized white plates of sulphur and salt. He thinks of Lot’s wife, standing until her form fell back, piece by piece, into the earth, a brutal reminder that too much attachment to the things of this world is the herald of death, and that God’s wrath is not to be taken lightly. The Rabbi feels the slight fear of the encroachment of another world, of the Other; and as he shivers slightly in the warm, pink air of languid twilight, he remembers also the humble prescence of preserving salt, functioning symbolically in the Covenant of Salt between God and Jacob’s children in Numbers 18:19, the covenant that will last forever.
In time immemorial, men would meet, facing eachother across the dancing flames, and amongst the patter of soft words, one man would rise and take some of the salt from the pouch kept around his belt. Hand held out, with the precious mineral cupped in his palm, he ceremoniously pours the grains into the pouch of the other man. Then the other man would do the same, their salts intermingled and impossible to separate. If one of the men came later to ask to break the covenant, he would be met with this saying: “Yea, it can be broken only by retrieving each of your grains of salt from my pouch”. Impossible. It was an unbreakable vow, much like the making of a child.
In the far reaches of the history of his people, the Rabbi knew that the true God had made this same covenant with the priests of Israel: that they may receive a portion of the gift-offerings the Israelites brought to the Lord of Hosts. This was in the time of the desert, when the temple was new and was nomadic, when Moses had to veil the brightness of his face and Aaron’s budded staff still lay in the temple recesses; when the Lord came to Moses’ tent as an intimate friend who wishes to speak openly, and all the Israelites, seeing the cloud descend on the tent, would rise, stand and fall prostrate at the entrances to their tents, facing the tent of the Lord’s visitation.
The Rabbi’s face grew bright, a pale remembrance of Moses’ face, as he lived for a minute or two in that glorious history and remembered the brightness of the Temple in Jerusalem, with the priests like bees coming in and out of the entrances. Then the Covenant of Salt remained, it was unbroken. But where is the reality of that Covenant now? The Temple suffocated underneath the soils and buildings of later ages, the Mercy Seat hidden in some mountain cave, the Ark perhaps sleeping in the earth, the priests flown and scattered like the rest of the Israelites: these were dark remembrances- where are God’s grains of salt? And ours? Until each grain is recovered, the covenant stands, like the covenant with David, “that his kingdom will remain in his line forever”. And we Israelites, were we not called “a nation of priests”- was not a covenant made with the priests, as our representatives, was it not made for all of us?
The sun gathered the ends of its robes and passed down to the other side of night, and the Rabbi did likewise. His door closed softly with a melancholy sound, a muffled sigh in the dark.
Many miles away, the sun was just rising and prodding at the temples of a priest who looked up, extinguished the tallow candle on his desk, and bent down again to write:
So you wish to stray and be lost?
How much better I do not also wish this.
Certainly, I dare say, I am unwelcome. But I listen to the Apostle who says: "Preach the word; insist upon it, welcome and unwelcome." Welcome to whom? Unwelcome to whom? By all means welcome to those who desire it; unwelcome to those who do not.
However unwelcome, I dare to say: "You wish to stray, you wish to be lost; but I do not want this," for the One whom I fear does not wish this. And should I wish it, consider his words of reproach: "The straying sheep you have not recalled; the lost sheep you have not sought."
Shall I fear you rather than him? Remember we must all present ourselves before the judgment seat of Christ.
I shall recall the straying; I shall seek the lost. Whether they wish it or not, I shall do it.”*
He was thinking hard, to the point of sweating, on his sermon for Holy Mass the next day. In the child-light, the cheerful brightness of the morning, the sheen of perspiration made him look pearly-white, yet earthy and not transcendent. But this belied the man’s spirit, for he was aflame with the love of his Master, rejoicing as each word fell on the paper, like so many drops of blood. It was if the sweat of his prayer of the spirit, the never-ending prayer enjoined upon him by the words of St. Paul, purified and cleansed him, and left him as both nourishment and purifier of the flock entrusted to him.
“You are the salt of the earth”, the light of the sun said as it caressed the face of the concentrating priest.
*St. Augustine, Sermo 46, 1-2: CCL 41, 529-530
A Reprint
