Thursday in the First Week of Advent, December 1, 202

Matthew 7:21; 24-27

Jesus said to his disciples: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”

The words of Jesus taken for the Gospel Reading for today’s Mass come at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  “These words of mine” had given the world his moral teaching in which he fulfilled or “filled up” the moral teaching given under Moses.  For, the Old Law could be kept even without the grace that would come from Christ, but the New Law can only be kept with the help of his grace.  The New Law the Lord taught was both clearer and sterner than the Old Law.  The consequences of not carrying out the Law are eternal.  The New Law is simpler, though, and quite sensible.  There is nothing in it of constant rituals necessary to attain purity nor of the necessity for circumcision.  What is necessary after committing sin is not some elaborate sacrifice but heartfelt repentance.  Above all things, the New Law is a Law of love.  The faithful carry out the commandments of Christ not out of fear that something dire will happen to them otherwise, but out love for the God who redeemed them from sin.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven.”  This underscores how the New Law is a Law of love.  It is not a law in which using the proper titles and outward show matters, but the interior disposition.  Anyone can address the Lord as “Lord” in order to try to gain some favor, but the one who is saved is the one who lives out in his life that Jesus is his Lord: “Only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” will enter the Kingdom of heaven.  We can understand this “entering” of the Kingdom of heaven in two ways: as joining ourselves to the Lord Jesus here and now, and as entering heaven when we pass from this world.  The first we can accomplish at any time, and it prepares us for the second.

“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”  The Lord means specifically the words he has uttered in the Sermon on the Mount, but we should also understand this admonition as including every word of which we have a record in the Gospels.  He makes a point of adding “acting” to listening, for the listening does not involve a change of heart, but the acting does.  The acting is also a public statement of our commitment to the Lord’s teachings.  Every moral action the believer performs states his belief to the world.  The Lord speaks of building a house on a rock.  This is very hard labor, especially when done by hand, as it would have been when he first spoke these words.  But to go to the trouble and expense of building one’s house on solid rock showed seriousness of purpose to family and neighbors alike, and it meant survival in the long term.  “The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.”  That is, physical sufferings, temptations, and persecution.  Despite all of these, the one who listens and acts on the words of the Lord Jesus — acts on his faith in the Lord — will persevere in it and be received into eternal dwellings after this life.  

“Everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand.”  Anyone would know not to build a house on sand.  To do so is to deliberately and knowingly act in away that is contrary even to one’s own best interests.  It is like playing games with a loaded gun or driving the wrong way on a street.  The only possible result, one that is quite foreseeable, is complete disaster.  When temptations and hardship come upon this person, his faith has no foundation and he loses it altogether: “it collapsed and was completely ruined.”

Let us build beautiful houses on the rock of Jesus Christ to show that in acting on his words we are not fearful slaves but joyous followers.