Thursday in the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time, June 25, 2020

Matthew 7:21-29

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. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’   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.” 

Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven.”  Many people call Jesus “Lord” with their mouths but call themselves “Lord” with their actions.  There are Protestant groups that teach that all a person needs to do to be saved is to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, basing this idea on Romans 10, 9: “For if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him up from the dead, you shall be saved.”  But what St. Paul meant was a public confession.  It does not mean sitting safely in one’s room and whispering the words.  The public confession here is the ancient version of what is called “outing” or “coming out” in the modern vernacular.  A person who “came out” as a Christian in St. Paul’s day was risking his life by doing so, or at the very least risking family relationships, friendships, livelihoods, social standing, and one’s personal fortune.  Public confession of Christianity meant a thorough alteration of one’s life, from abstaining from meat sacrificed to idols, avoiding brothels, no longer attending the public games, abandoning previously held philosophies, and otherwise living a life that fairly isolated a person from society.  He understands that all that matters is being the “the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”

“ ‘Did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ ”  That is, did we not seem to prophesy, or seem to drive out demons, or seem to do mighty deeds?  There are always those who believe they have great powers when in fact they do not.  They think that they perform great deeds, but they are fooling themselves.  The devil certainly knows better: “Now some also of the Jewish exorcists, who went about, attempted to invoke over them that had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying: ‘I conjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preaches.’  And there were certain men, seven sons of Sceva, a Jew, a chief priest, that did this. But the wicked spirit, answering, said to them: ‘Jesus I know: and Paul I know. But who are you?’ ” (Acts 19, 13-15).  Other folks, looking on, may think a person is performing a mighty deed in the name of Jesus, but only scrutiny of the person and of the deed reveals this: “Test everything: retain what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5, 21).  As for the expelling of demons, this is only accomplished by a priest appointed by a bishop for the task.

Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount in a very dramatic way, announcing that “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”  This is not the teaching of a Pharisee, who could only say, He who listens to the word of God, etc.  Only the Son of God can say, These words of mine.  It is a majestic statement.  The Lord likens the one who listens to his words and acts on them as a “wise man” who built his house on “rock”.  The word “wise” may be better understood as “prudent”, “shrewd”, or “sensible”.  Because Jesus is making a definitive statement about the necessity for believing and acting on his teaching, we ought to be aware of what he means by the “rock” on which the wise man builds his house.  The other time in this Gospel that Jesus speaks of a rock is in 16, 18: “I say to you, you are Rock, and upon this Rock I will build my Church.”  As if to make his meaning absolutely clear, the Lord adds, “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”, which explains the full meaning of “the rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house.  But it did not collapse.”