“You are the salt of the earth. … You are the light of the world.”

We all recognize these famous words of Jesus that come from the Beatitudes. They are a reminder from the Lord that in following Him, in carrying out His words, we play a role that the whole world needs.

It is possible to hear these sayings and to imagine that they are positive and encouraging, but not terribly challenging. In our day, salt and light are useful but also fairly common. That could suggest that our faith is likewise helpful but not overly demanding.

What is missed in that interpretation is the profound contribution of faith in Jesus Christ to the rightness and stability of the world. By sending His Son among us, our Heavenly Father revealed to the human race the truth about ourselves, about the world and about God. That truth is not a Christian or a Catholic truth, as if there could be another truth for different people.

The truth that God has made us for Himself, that we are sinners having broken with God’s will, that Jesus is the Savior of every person, is not just for us. The whole world needs to know it. That is how we are salt and light. We bring that truth, entrusted to us, to a world that would fall into corruption without salt, that would trip and fall in darkness without a needed source of light.

It is no secret that our American culture, and that of other so-called “developed” countries, are increasingly secular. They falsely embrace, as goods in themselves, separation from God and His exclusion from the public square and from public life. With the emphasis on the autonomy of each individual, we are told that everyone creates his own personal truth. But instead of bringing more freedom and happiness, don’t we sense the growing emptiness that is coming over us?

Our society is becoming ever more divided, along lines of economic status, race, belief, you name it. We sense growing weakness based on a failure of common purpose, of common conviction. Agreement on the most basic questions —  the nature of the human person, the true ends of a good life — is lost.

The understanding of freedom and common good that motivated the founding fathers of our country has evaporated in endless arguments over toleration and judgment, important words that like so much of our moral vocabulary have lost their meaning and become distorted. These are the fruits of a society that has lost sight of authentic truth, a society that is desperately in need of our salt and our light.

This became painfully obvious with the recent shooting in Paris. The response to that unconscionable act of violence was a brief, energetic outpouring that quickly deteriorated into a shallow discussion about freedom, especially the freedom of speech.

Some statements defended the rights of satirical comics, but little discussion ensued about real issues such as the responsibility to use free speech to promote the good of the human person or to avoid what conflicts with truth.

Few comments were made about growing restrictions on freedom of speech in our society when the topic has been deemed by some to be unacceptable, such as defense of the nature of marriage between a man and a woman or reference to God Himself.

Increasingly, we sense that our society is unconvinced about itself, unsure of any moral conviction that could help it to cope with our most important problems. The same Islamist jihadism that motived the Paris shooting is growing and causing great suffering for many including our fellow Christians in the Middle East and in Africa, especially in Nigeria. What is underway is a conflict between a movement that is distorted and devoted to violence, but spiritually convinced, encountering a “developed” but feeble old world that has mounting doubts about its own spiritual basis and motivation.

Without the crucial integration of faith and reason, we are defenseless against committed extremists, and no amount of military, police or intelligence work will remedy that.

Our role as salt and light, conveying the truth of God’s love for the world, will be essential if we are to meet the potentially lethal challenges to faith and culture that are all around us.